I designed these life event pages for members to have a consolidated source of tools, resources and advice to be financially ready during major life events.
I designed these life event pages for members to have a consolidated source of tools, resources and advice to be financially ready during major life events.
The United Services Automobile Association (USAA) establishes banking, investing and insurance services to over 13 million United States Armed Forces members and their families. They strive to provide financial security and education to their members and to establish strong financial futures.
The need to facilitate financial security and education during major changes in life was a necessity for USAA's members and needed to be addressed. We set out to understand the tools, resources and advice USAA's members needed to be financially prepared for these life events and design a roadmap for them to follow.
Research, Information Architecture, UI Design, Visual Design, Design System, Interaction Design
SEO Team, Project Manager, Developer, Product Manager, Senior Designer, and Designer (Myself)
Sketch, Miro, Asana, Zoom
3 months
Oct 2021 - Jan 2022
User Research, Information Architecture, UI Design, Visual Design, Design System, Interaction Design
SEO Team, Project Manager, Developer, Product Manager, Senior Designer, and Designer (Myself)
Sketch, Miro, Asana, Zoom
3 Months
Oct 2021 - Jan 2022
How might we provide the best resources to our members so they are able to prepare for the unique financial challenges these life events bring?
Understanding What Information Members Value Most
USAA had an existing community page for members, so we posed questions and started conversations with the community to develop an understanding of what resources and information they valued most when going through a major life change or what they wish they knew during these life events. We also spoke with employees of USAA who were military members and USAA members to gain valuable insight.
Going through a major life change causes a great deal of stress and anxiety on its own. Not knowing how to start preparing financially increased these feelings substantially.
Members found it very difficult to keep track of the important legal and financial information they needed to update during and after these events.
Since a large population of USAA's members are currently serving in the armed forces, they experience unique challenges when these life events occur. Not knowing what would change or how to prepare for it cause another layer of stress.
Members expressed a lack of knowledge and guidance on how to prepare for the future with the additional changes these life events created.
Assessing Other Sources of Information
I compared the advice articles and pages of other financial & insurance companies to understand how they provided guidance to their members for major life events.
Above: In looking at other companies, it was clear that some didn't have designated pages for major life events and the ones that did, didn't have a very defined structure to the information on the pages.
We conducted multiple, remote design workshops with fellow designers, the development team, project/product managers, the content team, SEO and business stakeholders to identify what information, tools and resources would need to present on the page. We also identified what existing components we would use from our DLS (design language system) and what components we needed to create to provide the best experience.
Prior to this project, USAA already had a DLS in place. However, some custom icons and components needed to be created to create contrast in the visual design and help to delineate the various sections of the pages.
USABILITY TESTING
Since we were utilizing an existing DLS in place, we really wanted feedback regarding the the components we created, the content present on the page and the overall structure of the page itself. We utilized User Zoom as our testing platform and were able to make two key changes based on testing feedback:
Our initial component and section designs relied heavily on using grid based patterns.
This caused there to be too much of the monotony on the page and a lack of visual interest for the information presented. We created better contrast by introducing table structures, more visual interesting grid patterns and card packs.
User reported that there were too many blocks of text present on the page. Again, causing a lack of visual interest and made the users experience feel sluggish.
We introduced customer iconography in addition to card packs to add visual interest to the text on the page and improve scannability of the page content.
Since we wanted to create greater visual interest on the page and not rely on repeated patterns and text heavy content, we implemented custom design components and iconography. This drastically improved the visual interest of the page and made the content more engaging.
With USAA already having a brand identity, we wanted to stick to most of the UI & Visual elements such as typography, color and structure that was already in place. This created consistency between other resources on USAA's website and upheld USAA's already developed brand.
Get in touch with me and we'll find out how my design expertise can help you.
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