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Wealthsimple
X BrainStation Industry Project
24 Hour Hackathon
BrainStation collaborated with Wealthsimple and created a 24-hour hackathon industry project, allowing a team of 3 UX students and 3 Software developers to collaborate and develop a digital solution to help Wealthsimple solve problems.
Timeline
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24 Hours
My Role
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UX Research
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UX/UI Designer
Tool
UX Team
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Figma
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Github
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Pen and Paper
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Wayne Wu
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Rae Le
Software Engineering Team
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Sophia K
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Hyun Kim
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Kubra Bilbik
BEFORE HACKATHON
Setting Goals
With the 24-hour time constraint, we knew that moving as a team was crucial, so we set some goals and directions to move smoothly in a collaborative environment.
Set schedules for each process of the hackathon, to avoid spending too much time on one thing;
Get software developers included in each step of the design process so that we are aware of each design constraint;
Never work in a silo; team work makes dream work!
Have fun!
The Problem
We started with one given question:
How might we help Wealthsimple Clients in Canada improve their financial literacy to make better financial decisions?
The Solution
With the time constraint, we created the most effective solution to ease users' confusion on terminologies to help novice investors learn financial jargon, increase literacy and make better financial decisions.
1. Learn
2. Focus
3. Customize
Define financial jargon so users can learn and understand financial terminologies within the Wealthsimple app.
Minimize the number of investment terminologies on one page; only showcase the most important ones to avoid overwhelming the user cognitively.
The interchangeable trading screen format option allows users to access the advanced version of the trading format when they reach higher trading confidence.
DEFINE
Research
To start, we conducted in-depth research to understand the problem space.
15%
Canadian adults consider themselves financially literate when it comes (...) to stocks.
67%
Surveyed customers rated the financial service industry poorly in explaining investment jargon.
38%
Investors say they need to learn more about their investing options.
With the significantly high percentage of data showcasing the need to learn investment jargon, we craft the core question:
How might we help novice Wealthsimple clients understand investment jargon to improve their financial literacy to make better personal financial decisions?
IDEATE
Proto Persona
With the data we discovered from research, some personal investing experiences and the time crunch, we decided to create a proto persona to encapsulate users' motivation, pain points and behaviour.
Juno Rowan
Job: Marketing manager
Location: Toronto
Age: 32
Salary: $50K
" I want to know if a stock is worth investing in, but all this financial jargon makes it hard for me to decide."
Pain Point
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Confused by financial jargon.
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Doesn't know where to start self-directed investing.
Motivation
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Be confident in making investment decisions herself.
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Understand how market patterns affect her investments.
Behaviour
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Has already invested some money into stocks with Wealthsimple.
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Takes advice from friends and family when choosing investment options.
The Current Stock Investing Experience
We created Juno's investing experience on Wealthsimple to understand and define the intervention opportunity. We realized that Juno lacks basic knowledge of stock jargon, which stops her from buying any stocks.
After capturing the opportunity for design intervention, we eventually identified three user stories to create our solution features, following the original task flow trading stocks in Wealthsimple.
As a novice investor,
I want to be able to learn what investing vocabulary means so that I can understand each stock.
I want to understand the most important performance matrix elements so that I can quickly determine the performance of each stock.
I want to know about the personalized information on the stock to make better investing decisions based on my financial situation.
Design within the original task flow:
Search for a stock to invest
Evaluate the stock
Invest in the stock
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Learn investment jargon.
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learn the most essential evaluation elements
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Learn the investment effects based on the user's investment portfolio
SOLUTION
Design With The Developers
At the design stage, we brainstormed ideas that we could quickly prototype and hand them off to software developers. Each design decision was made by consulting with our developers to ensure they could execute it in a timely manner.
Simple animation takes us a long time to develop! 🥲
Scroll bars and carousals are manageable and easy to develop! 😛
The current WealthSimple stock page:
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Lack of explanation of each jargon
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overwhelming metric amounts
Information is less accessible on a carousal.
We should provide some personal investment advice.
Proposed design:
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A simplified interface design with the main metrics to evaluate the stock in card style.
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Expanded explanation page to explain what each term means in detail.
Final Prototype
We were able to prototype the main screens and handed them off to the software developers, and they successfully built all proposed elements and interactions in time before the hackathon ended.
3.
4.
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2.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Explanation page to allow users to learn what each term means;
Users will not only learn what each investment term means but get informed about what this term means personally based on users' portfolio;
Scrollable card layout to avoid overwhelming novice investing users, allows users to learn the key metric terms for investing in a stock;
Interchangeable interface layout allows novice investors to choose advance interface style when they get more confident with investing in stocks.
Did We Solve The Problem?
Absolutely! Our interventions are impactful and cost-effective. Without creating a new feature branching off the current Wealthsimple product, we solve the problem by adding one simple feature that allows users to learn, understand and invest. By teaching novice investors investing jargon, they can now interact with Wealthsimple more than ever, and they are more confident to invest and trade in Wealthsimple.
Key Learning
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Communication is vital to teamwork. Because each team member listened and communicated, the team performed well on execution. We were among the few teams to build the complete prototype with the software engineering team successfully.
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Draft a clear timeline and goal before heading into a team project, especially if there is a tight time crunch. Set a time limit on each process so the team is on track with the project management.
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Have a great mindset. Don't stress. Sometimes, team members seem burnt out and stressed by the hackathon. Communicating with them and reminding them that we should have fun can relieve the team's tension and push everyone forward.
Here are some photos of the team during the hackathon. The experience is invaluable and precious. We had such a great time!
Thank you for reading my work!
Want to work with me? Or to say hello. Please don't hesitate to reach out.
