Challenge

Vanguard has asked us to add a recurring investment feature with growth visualizations and options to automatically invest at a desired recurrence rate, on any fund or stock they offer. The company hopes to encourage hands-off, relatively stress free long term investing.

There has been a tremendous interest in investing over the past 5-10 years as mobile apps and new brokerage firms have made it incredibly easy to start investing and trading the stock market. We want to determine how often individuals seek to invest, what hurdles they face with building the habit of investing or getting started.

Solution

Create a Recurring Investment feature that offers quick access to performance history, projected account returns and easy management of current holdings as well as simple creation of a new investment.

Research

Develop simple tools with important details.

There are numerous competitors in the world of investing with some focusing on advisors with more one-on-one investment help. Other firms focus on quick account setup, deposits and trading with very little help from someone at the company. The former appeals to a generally older generation that wants assistance through every step of the process, the latter appeals to younger investors who are very tech savvy and want to get up and running within a few days.

Findings
• A tool that offers helpful projected earnings for retirement
• Build a habit of investing
• Struggles with current Vanguard Desktop platform
• Desire to discover new funds and manage everything via app

Needs
• Helpful Performance Indicators
• Ability to Start/Stop Recurring Investments
• Popular Vanguard Funds and Stocks
• Simple UI that encourages long-term investing
• Follows current Vanguard design patterns
• Seamlessly integrated within existing interface

‍Vanguard manages to strike a unique balance that appeals to all generations, it offers fairly quick account setup but also has representatives.

Their user interface could be considered professional albeit a bit outdated and less approachable as compared to something like ETrade, TD Ameritrade or Robinhood.

In user interviews, we discussed investing platforms, frequency of placing trades as well as difficulties researching and managing positions and making adjustments to recurring investments. All users showed a strong interest in beginning or restarting a consistent investment plan to save for retirement and long term goals.
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Multiple users utilized simple index fund ETFs that mirror the S&P 500 or Nasdaq market indexes as these often outperform individual stock picking.

60%

Currently invest once per month-a few times per year.

100%

Would like to invest on a regular basis.

Schedule

Users want to invest either once or twice per month.

Information Architecture

Integrating a new feature into an existing flow.

Since this is a feature addition, and not a complete app task flow, the task flow was designed around accessing the new feature and completing the process of setting up a new investment.

Creating the task flow allowed me to visualize the feature from the user's perspective.

Building something new from something old.

The sitemap needed to be created to allow successful access to the additional feature, without compromising the existing visual hierarchy and task flow.

The wireframes showcase the successful integration of the recurring investment feature, with options to access it from the home page, as well as the menu.

View All Wireframes

Design

Seamlessly integrating the new feature utilizing existing design constraints.

‍The additional feature offers a new way of automating investing, tracking and projecting returns, and easily editing current investments through a user friendly, research-based design.

The feature is easily accessible via the current menu, as well as an additional CTA on the main landing page of the app. Creating charts and infographics throughout the design process allowed me to reach a large audience through easily understandable data visualization.

Testing and Iterating

Iterating based off feedback from investors and finalizing the design.

Since investing is already a complex field, there are multiple directions, tools and design elements that should be considered, along with regulations and safety precautions to avoid users placing unwanted or uninformed trades. I focused on these aspects and precautions as I approached users for research and designed the UI.

When it comes to stock information, some users wanted things simplified and others wanted more in-depth information. I chose to strike a healthy balance and include many of the investment research tools already in place on Vanguards website.

Gathering over two dozen testers allowed for thorough usability testing but lead to a few comments which had to be ignored due to their vast overruling from the majority of testers, such as color preference for buttons.
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Coming from an investing background, I thoroughly enjoyed designing this feature and would love the opportunity to build something similar for another company.