CommSec
Making investing accessible for every Australian in an era of massive financial disruption and uncertainty
CommSec
Making investing accessible for every Australian in an era of massive financial disruption and uncertainty
Oct 2021
Joe McLachlan Design
Oliver Bryant Strategy & research
Maddison Rutter-Malley Project Management
Yasin Masukor Design Advisory
Winner Good Design Award®
Context
CommSec is one of the most widely used investing apps in Australia, and with the financial space changing so rapidly in recent years, it was time for CommSec to change too.
CommSec approached Future Friendly with a 10-week project to deliver an evidence-based value proposition, tangible prototypes and videos to bring that value proposition to life, and a three horizons roadmap to deliver on the vision.
Problem
Investing is confusing. While the market is crowded with emerging players, no one solution was meeting the needs of the next generation of investors — Wherever they turn, customers were facing overwhelming complexity, or products that focussed on only a very specific way of investing.
Simple tools are easy to get started — but they increase fragmentation, and powerful tools try to meet all needs in one — but their complexity is overwhelming.
Overall this leaves customers feeling confused and unsure if they’re choosing the right tools, making the right decisions, and moving down the right path.
Process
The way we approached testing and refining our vision was to break it down into key opportunity areas, that we tested in progressive sprints and fed into the final end to end experience.
First we completed a landing page test to validate customers interest in each of the opportunity areas. Then we tested how we might integrate investing with finances through the CommBank app. Next we tested a modern, streamlined UI to assess how it was valued across both new and experienced investors.
Moving on to testing a flexible and customisable interface.
And in our final weeks we tested a data driven prototype that reacted to customer goals and needs.
Solution
We delivered a comprehensive vision for the future of investing; an experience that helps the next generation of investors navigate complexity, while progressively disclosing in-depth features for power users.
Rather than showing every feature and piece of information at once, we designed the experience to show the right things at the right time, depending on the user, their investing goals and expertise.
Decide what's right for you.
Get started guidance, recommendations, and in-line education to help make sense of complexity — and what’s right for you.
Take action with confidence and control.
The ideal platform looks different for each unique investor. A customisable interface helps you access the right tools at the right time — with the right level of detail to support a fast and efficient experience for any investing approach.
Adapt as you go.
Things change over time. Investing should too. Diverse investment options, flexible tools, and easy monitoring help you keep a close eye on your progress, and stay aligned with your evolving needs.
“It’s probably the best I’ve seen so far, out of the investing apps. It looks so nice, it feels like I’d be able to learn about investing much easier.”
— User research participant responding to our mobile prototype
Impact
At the conclusion of the project we delivered research-validated prototypes, vision videos to share with the wider organisation, and a three horizons roadmap for how to get there. We went on to partner with CommSec twice more to bring this vision to life.
Brent Southey, General Manager Digital, Data and Delivery at CommSec, said of our work;
“This really brings the last few months of work together in a coherent and compelling story. Creates a clear view of the design concepts, but also the potential of where we are heading... This is a strong foundation for us to build future implementable plans on”.