THE PROBLEM

Alternative investments (alts) are a broad category of investment products that are not well-understood, and have been historically inaccessible to those investors accustomed to traditional stocks and bonds. Consequently, investment advisors that differentiate themselves by specializing in alts needed a way to:

1. Easily construct portfolio proposals with the right mix of alts to match their clients’ goals and risk tolerances.

2. Clearly convey the value of their decisions to those clients.

Without the tools to do so, advisors would risk losing existing clients and struggle to attract new prospects.

My role

As UX architect, I was tasked with designing a new product for iCapital, from the ground up, to address the problem more effectively than two existing tools with overlapping features that the company needed to consolidate.

THE RESEARCH

My research plan consisted of two concurrent phases:

• Moderated user research:

  • Users: 12 users of both existing tools

  • Methodology: 1-on-1 discovery sessions to learn about the special needs and pain points of investment advisors specializing in alts.

  • Justification: Neither existing tool had undergone thorough user research, and many assumptions needed validation.

• Unmoderated user research:

  • Users: 25+ users of both existing tools

  • Methodology: Ranking exercise to gauge the value of features related to portfolio analytics

  • Justification: Given the business strategy to phase out the existing tools, I needed to assess the value of each feature to integrate them appropriately into the new product.

A key insight

Early synthesis of the research uncovered this key insight:

Investors are more persuaded by seeing how custom portfolios perform against traditional portfolios in different comparison scenarios, than by seeing performance projections of those same custom portfolios in isolation.

Investment advisors would therefore use inefficient hacks with their existing tools to provide that comparison data to their clients.

Evidence

Direct quotes across multiple users corroborated the key insight with contextual details:

design direction

After presenting these, and other, key learnings and recommendations to stakeholders, I began design explorations, starting with the product’s information architecture and primary workflows.

Specifically, portfolio comparison had already been implemented in one of the existing tools as a basic feature, but was never prioritized, and its interactions were limited and clunky. I made it a priority in the new product by:

• developing navigational flows that made portfolio comparison easily accessible from anywhere in the tool.

• optimizing the process of selecting and changing portfolios for comparison.

• streamlining the process of editing the contents of portfolios being compared to quickly view updated comparison data.

Artifacts for portfolio comparison

Validation & handoff

The wireframe flows were leveraged to create prototypes for usability testing, and were validated by six out of six internal & external users.

They were then handed off to a dedicated UI designer to be brought to high fidelity using design system components and patterns (though some new components needed to be created and added).

This process of wireframing, testing, and handoff, was repeated across all other common user flows (outside of just portfolio comparison) designed for the product.

UX outcomes

We delivered usability improvements for a multitude of user pain points that were discovered through research:

• User could now perform primary comparison tasks directly from the tool

  • 3 new features

• User could now perform secondary tasks more easily

  • 20+ new & updated features

• User would now have better understanding of terminology used across the tool

  • Updates to language/terminology for clarity and consistency

UX tools used

• Wireframing: Pen and paper

• Prototyping: Figma

• Initial research: Fullstory

• Unmoderated research: Maze

• Research repository: Dovetail