Case study: reporting for duty

user research + experience design + information architecture + visual design

the Situation

Financial reports, for the most part, all look the same - same graphs, same tables, same terminology. 

It's difficult to change course once patterns and styles have been established. But working on a new financial planning application, with all new reports, I had the opportunity to ask: Why can’t we do it better? 

As the lead designer on the reports, I worked with a team of business analysts, software developers, product directors & other ux professionals to rebuild our idea of what financial reporting could - and should - be. 

Step #1

In order to start with a clean slate, we dedicated one week to an intensive Google Design Sprint. As the designated “maker” of the group, I worked with the team to go from zero to testing a prototype in five days. 

Key insight: Two audiences = two similar but distinct needs. 

The financial advisors - “experts” with varying degrees of experience and financial knowledge - needed to be able to explain the reports. The clients of those advisors needed to be able to understand the reports, despite potentially complicated financial concepts. 

The client-advisor relationship hinges on both of those needs being met. It drives value for the client and lends credibility to the advisor. 

This insight led us to group important data points - like life expectancy, savings contributions or funding sources - into more intuitive categories like “What do I have” and “What am I doing.” Advisors could have the information they need accessible, but presented in a way that’s more client-friendly. 

Key insight: Data visualization shouldn’t be the default. 

Inspired by the examples we found across different industries and media, our team made the decision to challenge the overuse of charts and graphs in financial reports. We wanted our visuals to be powerful, not diluted. 

For example, we asked ourselves if a bar chart comparing assets and liabilities is any more clear or impactful than a simple statement of total net worth. As a designer, it was important to me to include charts and visuals consciously, not because it was the expectation. 

Step #2

Following the Google Design Sprint, I had primary ownership of the reports. Taking feedback from testing, I iterated on our first round of mocks to fix some of the identified trouble areas. 

Step #3

I then conducted two rounds of testing on the refreshed designs, one with each of our key audiences. 

Research Round 1: Financial Advisors 

I interviewed two financial advisors about their current reporting processes and our new designs. This research confirmed that our reports followed the typical structure of the client-advisor conversation about goals, supporting a critical component of acquiring and retaining clients. 

It also confirmed our hypothesis that explainability was key to our advisor audience. According to my interviewees, most clients weren’t really interested in the nitty gritty details behind their results - they just wanted to understand the big picture and know that someone else understood and cared about the details. 

Research Round 2: “Clients” 

Testing the reports with ten people not necessarily familiar with financial terms or concepts through UserTesting.com backed up my findings from the advisor interviews. 

The thing our test “clients” liked the best about the reports was how actionable they were. They only really cared about details in the context of specific actions they could take to meet their goals - the simplified presentation of the data behind those numbers was fine. 

This research also identified a problem. In an attempt to progressively disclose information in the reports, the summary-level and detail-level pages had very similar visual elements with different levels of detail exposed. While the financial advisors weren’t bothered by this, many clients were confused by the redundancy. Discovering this roadblock to an understandable report was extremely valuable, and helped us pivot in a direction that would better satisfy the needs of clients. 

Step #4

More design iterations addressed the feedback from testing. One seemingly small issue was the removal of a checkmark icon. It had been designed as a part of our story - “from here to there” - representing the “there” of goal success.

User testing showed that the checkmark sent mixed messages, however, so we removed it - while we had good intentions, our users knew best. I used the validated template to create consistent versions for each of our included financial scenarios, which continued to receive positive feedback in business testing and demos. 

Step #5

The challenge for the UX team as the first release of the new reports gets into the hands of users will be to continue to gather feedback, improve the reports as necessary, and expand the designs to new features and functionality, all while staying true to our goal: to be understandable by clients and explainable by advisors.