Building an investor-facing risk assessment tool
Overview
Goals-Based Risk (GBR) is an investor workflow to determine risk reactivity and develop an investment strategy based on their financial goals. It was developed from a research methodology, basing the workflow on the idea that people should be comfortable with the realities of investing and understand what they need to save today to reach their retirement goals.
My role
Researcher 🤔 / Designer ✍️
Challenges
The concept of this project was developed by other teams, but my team’s directive was to create a comprehensive experience to test the understandability of this risk assessment approach. If individual investors could determine a realistic goal amount, understand the ups and downs of investing, and be comfortable with an investment strategy that would get them to their goal, this could be a tremendously helpful tool for goals-based investing. However, since this was only previously tested as a concept, my team was responsible for creating the user flow from scratch and developing all-new pages for multiple outcomes.
Process
We divided the workflow into three main sections: data collection, cold path, and test drive. Each section had a set of introductions, and because the workflow was dependent on the user’s inputs, we had to create a set of options to accommodate for each variable, such as no 401(k) or no employer matching. The entire flow took about four months to create - so many sketches and conversations around what people have in mind when thinking about planning for retirement! In addition to designing the user flow, I also developed the testing plan to hear what users thought of this process.
Outcomes
While there was an overwhelmingly positive response to this kind of activity, there is still confusion on how information is gathered and used for this activity. 77% of participants stated this helped them prepare for the realities of investing, yet also showed that the majority of testers did not know how much to save for in retirement. To be an accurate measurement of risk assessment, there is also more transparency needed in applying the inputs into a simulation for a year in the life of an investment strategy that would get them to their goal. Making the connection between their savings plan and their retirement is key for helping people understand how investing could get them where they want.
