Challenge

TD Ameritrade, a financial platform for trading and investing services has a wealth of best in class financial education content across its large digital ecosystem. Over years of growth and acquisitions, the company’s educational content has become scattered over several different digital properties making it difficult for clients to navigate.

Idea

Create a single destination that provides personalized financial education content to prospects and clients in a new and engaging experience, that shows the company’s pursuit of innovation while minimizing content organization efforts for the business.

The first iteration of this experience used a conversational interface to gather voice input through a series of questions, to quickly and efficiently gather the personal data needed to generate the user’s personality ID. To add to the visual stimuli of the UI I believed it was important to put a ‘face’ to the experience to help guide the user in a friendly and easy conversational manner. I designed the visualized persona, Alvi based on the shield from the TD Ameritrade logo to provide some reactionary cues to encourage one’s progress in the experience.

In our early tests we validated that some people were willing to talk but many would fail to read the directions on the start screen before beginning the experience. To better set expectations on how the experience worked, we separated the main points onto their own screens before the questions began.
 

To better serve those averse to vocalizing their answers, we added a few alternatives to getting personalized financial education materials. The first option is the submission of one’s Facebook or Twitter account to provide the data for Alvi to create the user’s personality ID.

For those reluctant to provide their social post data, the final albeit less personalized option is to select a predefined profile from a set of four common investor types formulated from research. However, the user can fine tune their results by manually adjusting their personality metrics after receiving their educational content results.

How it Works

TD Ameritrade’s educational content was indexed by IBM Watson’s Natural Language Classification API according to six key metrics that provide unique IDs. Each user personality is defined by the Watson Personality Insights API which produces measurable scores that are converted into an algorithm to match to the most relevant educational content IDs. 

The conversational experience:

Once data capture is complete Alvi compiles your personalized educational content, organizing it into six groupings that match each metric of your investor personality type.

Client: TD Ameritrade

Agency: Havas

Role: Creative Director, Visual Design, UI & XD

Visual Design: Soobin Park, Gonzalo de la Asuncion

XD/UX: Joe McHeffy

Developers/Creative Technologists: Joe McHeffy, Angus Lo, Jad Mintun, Jian Xu, Marc Clifton, Stephen Cohrs, Danny Wang

Content Strategy & Copy: Jen Nash

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MY ROLE

As the creative director of this project, I contributed to the design of the user flow of the project and concepted the persona approach. I designed the Alvi visualization and the entire look and feel of the experience and UI in a mobile first approach.

I then directed the visual design team in translating the established design system into the desktop view, the addition of animation elements and the integration of subsequent features to the experience. I also directed the copywriter’s development of the Alvi tone of voice.