Empower Wellness and Financial Center

1. Empower Wellness and Financial Center User Experience Boot Camp Out-of-class Assignment Matthew Brown mbrown74@rocketmail.com

2. Product Information Product Name Empower Wellness and Financial Center Product purpose Empower is the second-largest retirement services provider in the United States, serving more than 38,000 plans and 9 million participants. It is focused on retirement, with expertise across all plan types, company sizes and market segments. Empower is contracted to companies and manages retirement plans for individual participants. Within the Empower website is a product currently called "Wellness and Financial Center." This product is for participants to educate themselves on various financial topics. These include budgeting, buying a house, retirement, and wealth management, among other related financial topics. 

3. Business Goals The Empower Wellness and Financial Center website has several goals it needs to achieve:  • Increase value to current participants by having meaningful content. • Improve satisfaction with companies that currently have contracts with Empower. These companies will primarily hear from their employees as to how valuable the product is. • Having a product that becomes valuable to clients who do not currently contract with Empower and differentiates the Empower product from our competitors.

4. User Personas • These personas were partially inspired by a TIAFF-CREF User Research Project1. This report broke up “participants” into four categories, however it did not go further in depth or present them as personas. The participants interviewed for this project represented these personas and were kept anonymous. • Sustained Investors: People who have investments and want to continue. Sustained Investors are the most important persona because this is the largest existing user base. • Up and Coming: People who are new to retirement, new to the company, or anticipate major life change that will disrupt their current plan. This is the second most important persona, because they are not yet taking full advantage of our services and Empower wants to move them to the Sustained Investor persona. • Almost Retired: People who are preparing to retire. This persona may be moving some or all of their investments or are playing catch up. This represents a smaller user group, therefore rank below Sustained Investors and Up and Coming user personas. • Retired: People who are retired and want to plan how to maintain and/or transfer wealth. This persona represents our smaller user base. 1. Razorfish. (2006). TIAFF-CREF User Research Project. Retrieved from http://www.juliecasanave.com/Design/Assets/sample_docs/TIAA_Personas.pdf

5. Sustained Investor User Persona • Interview results:

6. Up and Coming User Persona • Interview results:

7. Almost Retired User Persona • Interview results:

8. Retired User Persona • Interview results:

9. Requirements/Work Analysis

10. Prioritized Requirements • The stakeholders had created a new assessment tool, to help people review their financial goals and make plans for the future. The stakeholders wanted this assessment tool to be something that users noticed and used first. • Adding in improved content. The previous content was poorly written and did not provide enough depth. This led to Empower purchasing more substantial content from a third party. The new content had to be pulled from the third party sever, it could not just be reformatted into the Learning Center site, due to a contractual agreement. The stakeholders needed this to look like it was a part of the site, even though it technically was not. • Updating the name of the product to clear up confusion. The current name is "Wellness and Financial Center". Empower is planning on updating the name to the "Learning Center", because the previous name suggested that the site included information in regards to healthy living, which the site did not. "Wellness" was confusing to participants. • Content needed to be put into new buckets. The previous content was arranged in very generic  financial topics. The stakeholders wanted the content moved into Life Stage buckets, such as "Retirement planning", "Starting a family", "Emergency savings", "Paying for college", and "Home ownership". The stakeholders believe that this would help the content connect with users on a more human level. • The homepage of the Wellness and Financial Center had too much content, and needed to be trimmed and rearranged. • The site needed a refreshing new look and needed to continue to be responsive

11. Usability Test Plan and Script • Goals/Objectives • Empower wants to test the new Assessment Tool • Test to see how easy it is to use the new Empower Learning Center • Empower wants to get general opinions as to whether the new look is too distracting • Empower wants to understand how well labeled our content is and if it causes confusion • Users • Users were tested from the Sustained Investor and Up and Coming User Personas. • Participants • Balanced mix of genders, balanced mix of ages, people who are at various stages of retirement savings, and comfortable with using a laptop

12. Usability Test Plan and Script • Pre-test Setup • Participants were presented an Invision mockup of the new Empower Learning Center: • https://invis.io/NHPBNMS52K6#/340762143_FullScreen_1v2 • Pre-test Questions • Tell me a little bit about yourself? • You mentioned to me that you are either actively saving for retirement or just starting on your retirement savings. Tell me a little about what you’re doing to save for retirement? • How long have you been actively working towards this goal? • Does your company offer a retirement plan?

13. Usability Test Plan and Script • Scenario • You’ve started a new job and your company uses Empower to manage the retirement plan.You are at your desk and in between tasks. You decide you are going to visit the Empower Learning Center site to see what features it has.

14. Usability Test Plan and Script • Tasks • In particular, you hear from a coworker about an interactive assessment tool that evaluates how you are doing on your retirement plan. You go to the website. Show me how you would access the Assessment Tool. • It appears that the site has other features. You want to use a calculator to see how much the pension plan will provide in the future. Show me how you would get to the Pension Calculator. • The HR person who welcomed you today mentioned that there is a series of interactive learning modules on the site. You are interested in the Retirement topic in particular and want to play all the modules that are available. Show me how you would get to an option that played all the interactive learning modules that pertain to Retirement. • Now you want to focus on just the Savings topic on the Retirement page. How would you just navigate to the “Savings Module” specifically. • Can you find an article on the Retirement page that specifically refers to how much money you need for the future?

15. Usability Test Plan and Script • Metrics • I will be watching for how the user completes tasks, if navigation appears to be difficult, and any errors that happen • Post-test Questions •  Tell me your thoughts about your experience with this site. • What did you like best? What did you like least? • If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing, what would it be? • If you could tell the team NOT to change one thing, what would you want them to keep • Is there anything else you want to tell me?

16. Findings • Sustained Investor: • The Sustained Investor participant has been investing since their 20s. Puts money in Roth and 401k Plan. • She found the other option for getting to the savings module that I did not expect. • She thought the site had a lot of information and seemed to have a lot of depth in its content • Getting back to the home page was a challenge. A recommendation would be to come up with a solution to make navigation more clear. • Participant recommends keeping the Assessment Tool. She felt that it was a great concept. • The participant found the main photo on the home page distracting. Perhaps having a more conservative photo. • Participant wanted to know if there was a phone number or email to contact Empower. • Up and Coming: • The Up and Coming participant graduated from college a year and a half ago. He started contributing to his 401k plan the day before he took this test. He is planning on high risk investments because he wants a high rate of return. • Again, getting to the pension calculator was challenging for this participant. Will need to make this more prominent on the site. • The participant described the site as having “a ton of articles.” Seemed to really appreciate that the Retirement Page addressed all his concerns • Participant noted that he would prefer having a budgeting tool on the home page. He struggles with budgeting and is a big concern for him. • Wanted to have a phone number he could call reach a financial advisor. • The participate suggested a search function on the site, in order to more easily find articles that pertained to him.