Invest Confidently with Thurston

Thurston revolutionizes personal investing by providing a seamless, user-friendly experience for millennials and novice investors. Designed to build trust and offer financial education, Thurston simplifies complex financial products and empowers users to confidently navigate investing.

Problem Context

Traditional financial platforms like E*trade struggle to engage and retain millennials due to perceived complexity, lack of trust, and overwhelming jargon.

Data showed high inactivity rates and low conversion among millennial users, suggesting a need for modernization without alienating existing customers.

Feedback from the marketing survey:

“Feels like you already have to know finance in order to start using your website.”
— Antonio M., New customer, inactive five months after opening an account

“I preferred the Robinhood app… it’s pretty straightforward when I started investing and uncomplicated right from the start.”
— Alex G., Signed up with a competitor

Constraints

1. Established financial institutions face resistance to change from long-time customers who are accustomed to the current platform experience and may threaten to leave in response to significant disruptions.

2. Aging and singular code base present challenges in implementing site-wide changes, compromising overall system stability during modernization efforts.

3. The lack of new and modern stock offerings, such as cryptocurrency, limits the original platform's appeal and relevance to a segment of investors interested in digital assets.

4. We were unclear in terms of why new-generation investors were not encouraged to invest early since they are missing out on the benefit from long-term gains.

Goals

Without disrupting the current platform and current loyal customers who hate change:

• Improve brand perception to appeal to modern audiences

• Encourage the new generation of investors and increase conversion rates among millennials

• Maintain loyalty of existing customers without disrupting their current workflows

Team & Structure

6 Month Process

Research & Discovery:
• Understand our users
• Competitive analysis
• Reference data
• Prioritize with PM

Concept & User Test:
• Design Strategy
• Explore solutions
• Three concepts options
• User test and validate

Dev Handoff:
• Finalize visualize design
• Scope with PM and Devs
• Prep for development
• Provide design support

About Our Users

I designed high-level persona cards from customer interviews I’ve conducted and merged them with helpful data in the form of stats from our marketing research team to focus on key items about our users.

This method helped us understand our target users, their pain points, and what they value.

Millennials are aware of saving, but hesitate to invest due to a lack of knowledge, trust issues with hidden fees, and saddled with larger financial priorities.

Key takeaways from this research:

1. Very tech savvy and comfortable managing financial matters like banking on their mobile phone.

2. Millennials are open to financial advice services.

3. Rising costs of debt and job insecurity make it harder for millennials to save and invest.

4. A lack of knowledge and being overwhelmed by financial jargon about investing leads many millennials to delay investing.

Surprises:
• They do care about the future, where they would like to save for a house, a car, and emergencies.

Competitive analysis

After the research synthesis, the Product manager and I narrowed down key problems that we felt were important to focus on, because there were numerous pain points and problems.

We focused on the following, “how might we solve for…”
• Build Trust: How might we solve for trust? Would a financial advisor help?
• Affordability: For not enough money to invest, can we offer a product that accommodates small investments?
• Easy education: How should we ease their anxieties when it comes to learning?
• User-friendly design: help with education, guides step-by-step transactions and simplified options can ease anxiety.

Design Strategy

I identified the key barriers to entry for millennial investors:

• Confusing user interfaces.

• Lack of trust in financial products.

• Difficulty understanding investment terminology and processes.

My design focused on:

• Simplifying onboarding:
  We created an intuitive onboarding process to help users easily set up accounts.

• Educational components:
  Introduced interactive tools and content to help users learn investment basics in a clear and digestible way.

• Personalized experiences:
  Users could track investments based on their risk tolerance, goals, and timelines, allowing them to build confidence in their decisions.

Concepts & User Feedback

Ideation through sketches helped me understand the constraints of limited space on mobile. As I kept sketching, it was clear to keep the UI simple and prioritize key information users need to know right away.

Next, we tested three concepts in the form of wireframes in two weeks with 15 users.

Concept 1: Robo Advisor (Moderately Favored)
Users liked the personalized portfolio recommendations but wanted more control over individual stock selections. Half found it easy to follow and educational.

User Feedback: Half of the users initially favored this feature due to its simplicity and walking them through different investing styles. The biggest education for them was i.e. “When will you need the money” which provided them with perspective on how should they manage their money. The other half expressed a preference for a method to select individual stocks to independently build a portfolio based on their preferred investment style. While half did like the ease and comfort of having the robo advisor setting a portfolio for them and not worry.

Concept 2: Guided and stocks (Less Enthusiastic)
This concept provided step-by-step guidance but was met with mixed reactions. Some liked its simplicity, but others found certain data points confusing.

User Feedback: This concept received lukewarm enthusiasm. Half of the users appreciated the friendly content, finding it less intimidating and avoiding complex financial terms. They liked that it catered to their interests as a starting point. There were data points that were still confusing like the percentages of days gain as affected by the market, which gave them doubts.

Concept 3: Calculator then stocks (Most Preferred)
The most successful concept allowed users to input their starting amount and receive tailored investment advice. It appealed to users across the board, offering affordability and building confidence in their investment decisions.

User Feedback: A resounding success, as this experience caters to everyone, from those who distrust big banks due to the small cost to individuals with debt priorities and those needing guidance. The affordability and user experience provided them with a starting point to build familiarity and confidence. But what the users responded to most, was the ability to enter how much they would start with and preview what that amount could look like over time.

Finalize Visualize Design

Creating a different branding for Thurston was a good idea to specifically target millennials without disrupting existing ETrade customers. This approach allowed for tailored messaging, a new codebase, and a modern appeal offering flexibility for innovation.

Impact

• Due to a lack of mobile dev resources, we had to delay certain features like the robo advisor capability which led me to redesign the experience.

• Beta release of mobile app search feature resulted in increased millennial engagement by 3.3%.

• Noticed increased interest in hard cider, gaming companies, electric vehicles, and cannabis stocks.

Conclusion

• The creation of a separate product for millennials enhances engagement without disrupting existing customers.

• Simplified guidance for stock selection streamlines the investment process and makes it more accessible.

• User feedback highlights the importance of catering to diverse user needs and preferences.

• Affordability, and transparency, with the aid of a friendly and forgiving experience, are key factors in driving user adoption and boosting confidence for first-time investors.