OLD Smart Retire US old // Joe Russell

Talk about how it was brought to the Innovation team - needs that context somewhere.

Smart US and Stadion are working on a new decumulation product for the US market.

It’s similar to Smart Retire UK in concept but different in execution - the law and landscape are different over there.

The innovation team has an OKR to provide consultancy support to Smart US, so when we had a gap come up in our calendars, we offered to run a design agency project for them.

The plan is for us drop in, work for them for Jan & Feb, and deliver a high fidelity prototype for use in sales pitches in Q1.

This is almost exactly what we did for Smart Retire UK in 2018 (“Project Queen”), pictured right!

—-

Designers and front enders, be warned:

Smart Retire US is being built by Stadion. They are not using Bright storybook. They have a completely different tech stack. What you see today follows some of Bright’s layout rules but not all of them. This is has no impact on UK designers or engineers.

Stadion going to build mention?

Designing for voluntary adoption

SR US relies on an end user choosing to use it - and it probably wont be the cheapest in the marketplace. So we are competing on proposition and UX. This means the acquisition funnel has to be very persuasive.

Check throughout when I say ‘we’, ‘us’, me I, etc.

Talk about how it was brought to the Innovation team - needs that context somewhere.

Smart US and Stadion are working on a new decumulation product for the US market.

It’s similar to Smart Retire UK in concept but different in execution - the law and landscape are different over there.

The innovation team has an OKR to provide consultancy support to Smart US, so when we had a gap come up in our calendars, we offered to run a design agency project for them.

The plan is for us drop in, work for them for Jan & Feb, and deliver a high fidelity prototype for use in sales pitches in Q1.

This is almost exactly what we did for Smart Retire UK in 2018 (“Project Queen”), pictured right!

—-

Designers and front enders, be warned:

Smart Retire US is being built by Stadion. They are not using Bright storybook. They have a completely different tech stack. What you see today follows some of Bright’s layout rules but not all of them. This is has no impact on UK designers or engineers.

Stadion going to build mention?

Designing for voluntary adoption

SR US relies on an end user choosing to use it - and it probably wont be the cheapest in the marketplace. So we are competing on proposition and UX. This means the acquisition funnel has to be very persuasive.

Check throughout when I say ‘we’, ‘us’, me I, etc.

Talk about how it was brought to the Innovation team - needs that context somewhere.

Smart US and Stadion are working on a new decumulation product for the US market.

It’s similar to Smart Retire UK in concept but different in execution - the law and landscape are different over there.

The innovation team has an OKR to provide consultancy support to Smart US, so when we had a gap come up in our calendars, we offered to run a design agency project for them.

The plan is for us drop in, work for them for Jan & Feb, and deliver a high fidelity prototype for use in sales pitches in Q1.

This is almost exactly what we did for Smart Retire UK in 2018 (“Project Queen”), pictured right!

—-

Designers and front enders, be warned:

Smart Retire US is being built by Stadion. They are not using Bright storybook. They have a completely different tech stack. What you see today follows some of Bright’s layout rules but not all of them. This is has no impact on UK designers or engineers.

Stadion going to build mention?

Designing for voluntary adoption

SR US relies on an end user choosing to use it - and it probably wont be the cheapest in the marketplace. So we are competing on proposition and UX. This means the acquisition funnel has to be very persuasive.

Check throughout when I say ‘we’, ‘us’, me I, etc.

Situation

A conceptual design project in which we designed the user experience for a decumulation planning product for the US market. It involved a guided user journey in which users were asked a series of multiple choice questions, enabling them to create a rough plan before perfecting the figures and then signing up to the decumulation product.

Smart in the US was missing out on a huge opportunity for a product that guides users through the full retirement process - over 80 million participants ($32.6tn in assets) in the potential market. [Cerulli Report - U.S Retirement End-Investor 2021]
There was already a ‘Smart Retire’ product in the UK, but the retirement law and landscape are very different in the US, so Smart needed a brand new product for the US market.
Smart US brought requirements to our team, backed up by research and some initial discovery work.
The product had to support accumulation and decumulation, taking users through all retirement stages:
- Pre-retirement: build understanding of retirement saving, nudges, goal planning
- Transitioning to retirement: retirement plan creation & execution, social security analysis and education, nudges based on life events
- In retirement: automatic withdrawal based on participant needs, flexible one-off payments, ability to update plan

The challenge was providing users with a product detailed and comprehensive enough to properly support them through the entirety of their retirement journey, while ensuring its ease of use. Historically any ‘retirement planner’ style apps have been either lengthy and incomprehensible to most users, or very ‘surface level’ and near to useless. We needed to strike a delicate balance, while also attracting customers and educating them along the way.

Situation

A conceptual design project in which we designed the user experience for a decumulation planning product for the US market. It involved a guided user journey in which users were asked a series of multiple choice questions, enabling them to create a rough plan before perfecting the figures and then signing up to the decumulation product.

Smart in the US was missing out on a huge opportunity for a product that guides users through the full retirement process - over 80 million participants ($32.6tn in assets) in the potential market. [Cerulli Report - U.S Retirement End-Investor 2021]
There was already a ‘Smart Retire’ product in the UK, but the retirement law and landscape are very different in the US, so Smart needed a brand new product for the US market.
Smart US brought requirements to our team, backed up by research and some initial discovery work.
The product had to support accumulation and decumulation, taking users through all retirement stages:
- Pre-retirement: build understanding of retirement saving, nudges, goal planning
- Transitioning to retirement: retirement plan creation & execution, social security analysis and education, nudges based on life events
- In retirement: automatic withdrawal based on participant needs, flexible one-off payments, ability to update plan

The challenge was providing users with a product detailed and comprehensive enough to properly support them through the entirety of their retirement journey, while ensuring its ease of use. Historically any ‘retirement planner’ style apps have been either lengthy and incomprehensible to most users, or very ‘surface level’ and near to useless. We needed to strike a delicate balance, while also attracting customers and educating them along the way.

Situation

A conceptual design project in which we designed the user experience for a decumulation planning product for the US market. It involved a guided user journey in which users were asked a series of multiple choice questions, enabling them to create a rough plan before perfecting the figures and then signing up to the decumulation product.

Smart in the US was missing out on a huge opportunity for a product that guides users through the full retirement process - over 80 million participants ($32.6tn in assets) in the potential market. [Cerulli Report - U.S Retirement End-Investor 2021]
There was already a ‘Smart Retire’ product in the UK, but the retirement law and landscape are very different in the US, so Smart needed a brand new product for the US market.
Smart US brought requirements to our team, backed up by research and some initial discovery work.
The product had to support accumulation and decumulation, taking users through all retirement stages:
- Pre-retirement: build understanding of retirement saving, nudges, goal planning
- Transitioning to retirement: retirement plan creation & execution, social security analysis and education, nudges based on life events
- In retirement: automatic withdrawal based on participant needs, flexible one-off payments, ability to update plan

The challenge was providing users with a product detailed and comprehensive enough to properly support them through the entirety of their retirement journey, while ensuring its ease of use. Historically any ‘retirement planner’ style apps have been either lengthy and incomprehensible to most users, or very ‘surface level’ and near to useless. We needed to strike a delicate balance, while also attracting customers and educating them along the way.

Task

Design lead - explain here a bit.

Research analysis
Design exploration, running workshops with stakeholders
Design the end-to-end user experience, UX
Design all components, visual and interaction, building on the Smart Design system (case study link?), and expanding upon it.
Build high-fidelity prototypes, to explore design routes and a final deliverable prototype (Real-code in Framer)

Possibly add more details to these, if the details don’t fit neatly in the sections below.

Task

Design lead - explain here a bit.

Research analysis
Design exploration, running workshops with stakeholders
Design the end-to-end user experience, UX
Design all components, visual and interaction, building on the Smart Design system (case study link?), and expanding upon it.
Build high-fidelity prototypes, to explore design routes and a final deliverable prototype (Real-code in Framer)

Possibly add more details to these, if the details don’t fit neatly in the sections below.

Task

Design lead - explain here a bit.

Research analysis
Design exploration, running workshops with stakeholders
Design the end-to-end user experience, UX
Design all components, visual and interaction, building on the Smart Design system (case study link?), and expanding upon it.
Build high-fidelity prototypes, to explore design routes and a final deliverable prototype (Real-code in Framer)

Possibly add more details to these, if the details don’t fit neatly in the sections below.

Action

Research analysis

The research provided was based on contextual interviews with US residents at various stages: 12 pre-retirement, 12 transitioning to retirement, 12 in retirement. The research team also interviewed 10 US financial advisors for their perspective - this would help inform how we designed the options presented to users.

Analysing the research, we came to several main conclusions:

Healthcare and outliving your retirement savings were the two top sources of stress in retirement for participants.
Participants generally do not understand the retirement products already on the market.

These findings broadly matched our hypotheses and assumptions, but it was good to have data (even with a relatively small sample) to support them.

Redo the chart in Fig! Bars need labels with %. It shouldn’t be a big part of the case study, as I didn’t do it - just analysed it a bit like.

Top source of Stress

Sources of support for retirement for retirees (maybe don’t show this as it doesn’t support either of the two conclusions above!)

This gave us something. Our goals. As discussed above. Put em here, really.

Action

Research analysis

The research provided was based on contextual interviews with US residents at various stages: 12 pre-retirement, 12 transitioning to retirement, 12 in retirement. The research team also interviewed 10 US financial advisors for their perspective - this would help inform how we designed the options presented to users.

Analysing the research, we came to several main conclusions:

Healthcare and outliving your retirement savings were the two top sources of stress in retirement for participants.
Participants generally do not understand the retirement products already on the market.

These findings broadly matched our hypotheses and assumptions, but it was good to have data (even with a relatively small sample) to support them.

Redo the chart in Fig! Bars need labels with %. It shouldn’t be a big part of the case study, as I didn’t do it - just analysed it a bit like.

Top source of Stress

Sources of support for retirement for retirees (maybe don’t show this as it doesn’t support either of the two conclusions above!)

This gave us something. Our goals. As discussed above. Put em here, really.

Action

Research analysis

The research provided was based on contextual interviews with US residents at various stages: 12 pre-retirement, 12 transitioning to retirement, 12 in retirement. The research team also interviewed 10 US financial advisors for their perspective - this would help inform how we designed the options presented to users.

Analysing the research, we came to several main conclusions:

Healthcare and outliving your retirement savings were the two top sources of stress in retirement for participants.
Participants generally do not understand the retirement products already on the market.

These findings broadly matched our hypotheses and assumptions, but it was good to have data (even with a relatively small sample) to support them.

Redo the chart in Fig! Bars need labels with %. It shouldn’t be a big part of the case study, as I didn’t do it - just analysed it a bit like.

Top source of Stress

Sources of support for retirement for retirees (maybe don’t show this as it doesn’t support either of the two conclusions above!)

This gave us something. Our goals. As discussed above. Put em here, really.

While detailed, this was needlessly complex, for both the users that would experience the journey, and anyone working on the project trying to understand it.

I ran a workshop with stakeholders, to both simplify the journey and clarify key points.

After a lot of discussion, as a group we decided that the project actually needed two distinct (but connected) parts - ‘Awareness and interest’ and ‘Illustration and quote’.

The original journey lacked a real ‘Awareness and interest’ phase - it relied on users to already knowing enough about this ‘Smart Retire’ product to want to click on a card somewhere in their pension app (that they likely rarely or never opened). As well as within the main retirement planner phase (within the second part of the journey, ‘Illustration and quote’), the users needed information before using our app - before committing to using any product, they need to be educated and sold on it. The simple solution was a simple informational and marketing website, combined with email campaigns for existing Smart users.