This printed report is an important discussion tool to explain the status of investments to current high net worth customers.
To more clearly communicate the current and proposed actions, the report was reorganized to tell a story, the data visualization was revamped to be more compelling in the space, and the overall look was sharpened to update the brand.
Client : Charles Schwab
Tools : OmniGraffle, Photoshop, Numbers
Role : Senior User Experience Designer
The project came along because of other extensive work the agency had done for the client. It wasn’t product design, but needed a UX eye to better communicate to customers. Also, it was dynamically generated for customers so it needed to be modular and flexible.
First, I talked to the client and agency SMEs to learn the ecosystem of the document: when and why customers received it, what its purpose was and how they consumed it.
Customers were high net worth individuals that had the client’s investment advisors handle their money. The report was delivered as a dashboard of their investment situation with recommendations for keeping up with market trends. Talking to customers wasn’t an option, but second-hand knowledge of customers was strong and available, so it wasn’t a problem.
As a redesign of an existing document template, I dissected the current report to assess it’s content and organization. I was also able to gather other reports from the client as well as reports from competitors.
It was clear that the report needed to be reorganized to better tell the customers financial story and justify the client’s services. It was also in strong need of an updated look.
Based on goal of the consultation report, I quickly chunked out the pages into logical sections and created an inventory identifying content and content gaps. The project manager and I then created a schedule based on sections of the report and got client sign off.
With milestones set, I worked first on global elements like header, footer and layout grid. I based decisions on content, new document orientation and printing considerations.
This also provided me with structure for my layout files. I now had pages that I could fill based on the inventory. The wireframes used real data to ensure they worked for all customer data, and to help keep the client focus on layout instead of numbers. This added time to the wireframes, but ultimately made things run more smoothly.
This report begins telling the consultation report by welcoming the client, providing context for the report, and explaining Schwab’s approach. The modularity of the report allows parts of the introduction to be omitted for long-standing clients.
The client’s story begins with their current investment portfolio and financial needs. This data is compared side-by-side with data from a proposed portfolio scenario. The modularity of the report lets it fit the composition of the client portfolio.
These pages help sell the proposed portfolio by giving insight in to estimated results of changing the client portfolio. Again the modularity of the report lets it fit the composition of the proposed portfolio.
The consultation report closes with specific details of the changes that are proposed. This gives the client an understanding of how their holdings will change and what transactions will be executed on their behalf. This is especially useful for the client’s later reference.
After the first project milestone, our visual designer came in to work on the look and data visualization. We sat near each other and had formal & informal discussions throughout the rest of the project. It was helpful to be able to come together and break off as needed.
Since the report was broken into sections, she was able to apply visual design to a section as I moved onto the next part. But we were still able to discuss elements and update design patterns when needed.
To ensure all of the data would fit in the proposed layout, some pages had to be fully designed. Here you see an example of a table containing 12 months of estimated investment income.
The work was well received at each milestone with very manageable revision requests from the client. In the end, the client reaction to the consultation report was very positive.
The final designs were passed off to the client and they parsed them into templates for their proprietary reporting software.