ROLE
Conceptualisation
UX Design
Strategist
TEAM
Client Web and Mobile:
3 Product Designers
1 Product Manager
TIMELINE
8 weeks
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Northwestern Mutual is a financial services company that helps their 5M+ clients plan for their future through investments, insurance and financial planning
THE PROBLEM
Clients don't have a way to share major life changes that potentially impact their finances with their advisor
Major life changes like starting a education, birth of a child, buying a home, loosing a job affects finances. If financial plans stay outdated, clients can miss chances to save more, protect income, or adjust goals
THE SOLUTION
A feature that lets clients share their life changes with their advisor in a way that provides accurate details. This enables the advisor to start taking action and adjust the financial plan accordingly
The design is focused on helping the advisors receive details about major life changes in an actionable manner. It also gives clients clarity on how those changes might affect their financial goals
BACKGROUND + CONTEXT
Clients usually meet their financial advisor only once a year to plan their finances
But a lot can change in life in that time like:
Job change
Birth
Adoption
Death
Buying a home
Relocation
Health Issues
Divorce
Starting an education
Financial windfall
Retirement
Legal Issues
Marriage
These changes impact the clients financial plan and goals…
…so advisors must adjust the client's savings, insurance, investments, etc. to match these changes
But the advisor may not know not know about these changes until they meet the client next
THE ASK
Updating the advisor on events in their clients lives allows them to provide the best guidance on achieving their financial goals
How might we enable advisors to identify client's life events when they happen - outside of scheduled meetings?
THE CURRENT EXPERIENCE
The 'Add Life Event' is a simple life events reporting tool
01
Client wants to report a life event
02
Choose the type of life event
03
Optional • Add additional context
04
Submit the life event
05
Life event shared with advisor
Now the client has reported the life event. The advisor receives a simple note in an email
Hover to see email anatomy
PAIN POINTS
The current experience enables advisors to learn about life events outside of scheduled meetings.
But,
Advisors don't receive details about the life event, so…
01
It's hard to personalise recommendations for their client without the full picture
02
They hold off asking questions to avoid seeming intrusive and wait until the annual meeting
Advisors get life event info as unstructured notes, so…
03
It’s difficult to query, filter or analyse for outreach
04
They would need to re-read past notes to surface key life events, slowing down meeting prep and increasing cognitive load
Clients don’t realize the life event’s impact, so…
05
They don't see how it affects their financial plans and goals
06
They don't feel the need to adjust their plans and goals
CHALLENGES
This project was under the Client Web and Mobile (CWM) team
This involved designing experiences for clients, but we were ultimately solving for both, clients and advisors
CHALLENGE 01
The experience involved tasks traditionally owned by advisors like gathering life event details, so the experience had to complement, not replace, their role
CHALLENGE 02
Clients trust advisor recommendations more than those from the digital product, so the experience had to encourage client-advisor touch points, not replace it
INITIAL IDEATION
After understanding the problem space, I brainstormed to revamp the clients journey of reporting a life event
Iteration 01
Current experience
Redesigned experience
DESIGNS & DECISIONS
I started with mid-fidelity web prototypes to showcase the redesigned flow and structure
I presented these initial designs to stakeholders to gather their feedback but platform of the initial prototypes came out of the box!
While partners were happy about the redesigned flow, they were primarily concerned about the platform choice for the prototypes
Over 80% of clients who report life events today do so through the mobile app, not the web
So, I pivoted to a mobile-first approach
Step 1
Gathering structured information about the life event
Recognition rather than recall
Structured form fields help advisors capture life event details in an organized, consistent format making it easier to filter, analyse, and use that information to update the client’s financial plan in line with their recent life changes
Step 2
Using the life event information filled by the client to visualise projected impact
I looked into the clients Financial Overview to identify visualisations to leverage
Hover on the cards to see the visualisations from the financial overview
Projections help clients see how the life event affects their financial picture
This shows impact on the bigger financial picture, but not financial plan or goals
Next, I looked into the clients Planning Experience to identify features we could repurpose
The client planning experience houses the Goal Progress Tracker
My idea was to build on this tracker and use the client’s current contributions to estimate how the life event might shift their progress like reaching retirement sooner or paying off debt faster
During feedback, stakeholders shared that as part of the upcoming PI vision, Plan Tracker was going to be decommissioned, which meant we couldn't access the real-time tracking data needed to visualise the impact of a life event on goal progress
So I explored a financial plan 'sandbox'
The idea was to use existing plan data like current contributions, target to let clients explore hypothetical adjustments for the goals and see projected impact
Clients can choose a financial scenario to explore the impact of the life event on their financial plan (financial goals)
We will use the details of the life event the client shared to curate a plan for them to explore
Conservative Plan
Minimize monthly contributions and prioritize financial stability - low risk
Moderate Plan
Balance between saving and spending - moderate risk
Aggressive Plan
Maximize goal contributions and growth potential - high risk
or adjust and explore the plan themselves
Custom Plan
Manually adjust each goal based on your preferences
When clients explore the impact firsthand, they recognise the value of turning to their advisor
Step 3
Marking interest areas to discuss with advisor post life event
Helps advisors speed meeting prep and guide personalised conversations with the client
Step 4
Submitting the life event and leaving the client with educational resources
Educational resources make clients feel immediately informed and supported
I tested the first iteration of the flow with a few stakeholders
It required impact exploration before submitting the life event
"Some users might just wanted to notify their advisor quickly without going through it
Adding more user control in the flow…
Iteration 02
Making impact exploration 'skippable'
Step 2.1
Adding an interstitial screen
Enables clients to skip the impact exploration tool and just quickly share the life event
SUMMARY OF THE FINAL PROTOTYPE
Some extra work!
Once the client shares the life event, it would be sent to the advisors dashboard
Advisor Dashboard was out of our scope. This is just the vision proposed to that team to tie it to the client experience
OUTCOMES
The prototype is ready for concept and validation testing with clients
That said, I still made sure to think ahead and outlined how we could measure success post-launch. Here’s how I planned to evaluate the impact of the redesigned life events flow:
Increase monthly active users
By prompting clients to report life events, the feature brings them back to the client platform, encouraging clients to actively engage
Contribute to PPHP (Percentage of Purchasing Households with a Plan)
Make clients buy products as part of a strategic financial plan created with their advisor rather than standalone products
WORDS OF APPRECIATION
"This experience will be extremely valuable to our clients
Sr. Product Manager, Client Web and Mobile Team
"Great call out about the role of the advisor
Product Design Lead, Planning Experience Team
"You approached the problem with thoughtfulness and precision
Sr. Product Designer, Client Web and Mobile Team
REFLECTIONS
This project was jam-packed with a lot of exploration and discussion with stakeholders across teams. It feels almost impossible to boil down my learning, but if I had to, here they are!
Balancing priorities: Even though I was designing primarily for clients, it was crucial to complement the role of the advisor and not replace it
Aligning with multiple teams: I aligned my work with the broader vision of my own team (client web and mobile) and the planning team
Bonus because you stayed :)
Here are some of the pictures from the time I worked on this project at NM!
My final presentation of the 'Life Happens' project at the internship showcase at NM
Design team for this project
Clockwise from top left: Abby Gettman (Lead Product Designer), Me, Seth (Sr. Product Designer)
Product Designer ✦