Health tech / employer benefitsTesting before launchFirst Stop Health
Rehearsing the EHR Cutover
Every provider had to switch to the new EHR on the same day. So we used AI-powered design prototypes to practice first.
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FintechAsked, then builtUSAA
Skip the Pie Chart
USAA's investing product needed $25,000 to start, and members were leaving for new online firms that needed almost nothing. I led the design of a low-cost product that signs you up through a simple chat, and members put $500 million in it.
- Role
- Led design, end to end
- Team
- Two designers, plus web partners and an outside agency for art
Hear the story in three minutes →
The insight
Every investing product shows your money as a pie chart, split into slices. Our sessions with members showed it didn't help any of them. Members didn't want to see slices. They wanted the answer to one question: if I put in this much, how much could I make or lose this year? So we answered that question in dollars, and more people said they'd open an account.
The "what if" step from the prototype
The problem
Three times the fee, and a $25,000 wall.
New online firms had started managing people's money for a small fee, and you could start with little or nothing. They were pulling USAA members away. USAA's closest product needed $25,000 just to open an account, and it charged 1.5% a year, about three times what the new firms charged. So a member who wanted to start small had every reason to go somewhere else.
USAA decided to build its own low-cost product with a low minimum. I led the design, from the first sessions with members all the way through launch and the year after.
Evidence
Decisions
- 01
Start with the members who left.
The people who could tell us what was wrong were the ones who had already moved their money to a rival. So we spent three days with them. We listened, sketched, and tested paper versions right there with them, and they told us what the product had to do.
- 02
Make signing up a conversation.
Instead of a long form, we made sign-up a chat that asks plain questions, one at a time. One question is easier to answer than a whole page of them, and at the end of the chat, the member gets an investment mix that fits them.
- 03
Skip the pie chart.
This is where the insight became a screen. Instead of slices, members saw what their money could gain or lose in a year, in dollars, based on how much they said they'd put in.
- 04
Let designers own the look in the live product.
Our team had the skills to work in code, so we got access to it and worked side by side with the developers. When something looked off in the live product, we fixed it right in the code.
Results
$500M
under management
3 months
from pilot to live for 12 million members
1 patent
for the chat that picks your investments
After the pilot, the product went live to all 12 million USAA members in three months, with no marketing push behind it. Members who couldn't get past the $25,000 wall now had a USAA option they could start small with, and it grew to $500 million under management. The sign-up chat we designed earned a patent, for a conversation that asks plain questions and ends with an investment mix that fits you. The phone at the top of this page is a rebuilt version of that chat, so you can try it yourself.