New Client Experience

New Client Experience
Rethink and redesign account opening experience at TD Ameritrade

TD Ameritrade account opening process was originally designed nearly a decade ago, and while we've made incremental updates over the years to address users' pain points and accommodate the evolving landscape of business use cases, it has become evident that a comprehensive overhaul is necessary. The decision to revamp the entire process marks a strategic initiative to start afresh, leveraging modern technologies and design principles to create a seamless, user-friendly, and forward-looking account opening experience.

We spent a few months at Pivotal Labs (now VMWare Tanzu Labs) to kickstart and adopt agile methodologies to innovate the way we work and quickly launch the product to market.

Role

Lead for design and research

Tools

Figma, Sketch, Mural, Zeplin, Tableau, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Creative Studio, Validately / UserZoom ...and lots of stickies & sharpies

Problems (or Opportunities)

Users face friction, leading to high drop-offs, difficulty accessing crucial information, and challenges with seamless transactions
The outdated design limits our cross-platform availability without extra effort
The process of transforming conceptual ideas into market-ready solutions is time-consuming, causing delays in product launches
Low funding rate of accounts during onboarding

Outcome

Increased the account opening rate by 30%
Saved almost 6-8 minutes per account opening and deployed ways to reduce it further for existing clients
Reduced kick-to-paper rate by 15%
The success of user-centered design methodology kickstarted other projects adopting the same model throughout various departments in the organization

Process

Highlights of this initiative are the agile and collaborative approach where we focused on reducing documentation and split the work into two-week sprint sessions. We worked hand-in-hand with business, product, and development teams in a startup-like atmosphere.

DISCOVER
Discovery & Framing

Understand the users, and empathize with their pains/needs, the business case for the new product, and the technical constraints or considerations involved in creating the product.

DISCOVER
Service blueprint

Map out the current process, front-end and back-end interactions, and drop-off numbers at each step.

DISCOVER
Assumptions & questions

After gaining insight into the online account opening flow, we spent time outlining our assumptions (things that we believe to be true but which are not based on facts or proof). We brainstormed and came up with questions we could ask users to help validate/invalidate each of the riskiest assumptions. We used these questions to create our interview script for exploratory research.

2x2 matrix of assumptions and risks

DISCOVER
Stakeholder interviews

Get the answers to questions like what success/failure means to them, their biggest concerns, etc. allowing each stakeholder to give us their own opinions.

DISCOVER
Exploratory research

We spoke to several existing clients and prospects asking them about their investing background, recent account opening experience, steps they took, best and worst parts, expectations around opening a new account, firm evaluation criteria, account funding behaviors, etc. Generated insights and key focus areas based on prevalence, actionability, and relationship to our project goals.

IDEATE
Persona creation

Created personas to humanize and understand the users, guiding user-centered decisions, fostering empathy, and ensuring that features align with the diverse needs and preferences of your target audience.

We created three different personas to cater to different types of users, who have different motivations to sign up for a new account.

IDEATE
Scenario creation and Design studio

Once we had some solutions to focus on for initial designs, we mapped scenarios, sketched out designs, and prioritized the placement of key features.

Design studio is a collaborative and structured approach to solving design problems where we involve different teams in ideation and brainstorming sessions. After sketching we engaged in a dot-voting process to determine the placement/prominence of design ideas and features.

DESIGN
Prototyping

After sketching we converted the ideas to prototypes using Sketch to visualize and test their functionality before the actual development.

We ran a 2-week sprint including ideation, prototyping, and usability testing session.

In the design phase, we ensured our solution adhered to accessibility standards, meeting WCAG requirements.

View prototype

RESEARCH
Usability sessions & Synthesis

Following the path of a user-centric approach, we implemented bi-weekly user research sessions. These sessions played a pivotal role in gaining a comprehensive understanding of both challenges and desired features within the project's scope.

These research sessions provided valuable insights that directly influenced the decision-making process throughout the project. By actively engaging with different user personas, we were able to tailor our design and development strategies to better address the specific requirements and expectations of our diverse user base. This iterative and user-focused approach not only facilitated the identification of potential issues but also paved the way for the seamless integration of user feedback, resulting in a more refined and user-friendly end product.

DEVELOPMENT / QA
Dev-Design pairing, QA, and backlog refinement

Once every week (or two weeks) I paired with a developer (rotated continuously) to work on different UI/UX-related bugs logged by self or QA. Based on the scope of the work, the aim is to collaborate and fix as many as possible in one session.

We used JIRA as a tracker to manage user stories. I created an epic for all UX-related stories where we prioritize which story needs to get fixed and move to production. This was happening with the collaboration of product, dev, and QA.

Finally, we used to test the fully developed user stories in different environments and provide sign-off or work with dev, QA to fix issues.

LAUNCH & MEASURE
Flexible process and field-level analytics

We created a responsive component-based design system, allowing seamless module repositioning.

Developed a dynamic backend admin tool for customizable account opening flows. Launched tailored variations for user types, geography, and relationships. Leveraged field-level analytics to measure user engagement, identify frictions, and drive continuous improvement through iterative ideation, design, launch, and testing cycles.

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