Fidelity Investments' NetBenefits web application has provided online account access to retirement savings account investors for many years. I was tasked with leading the redesign of NetBenefits shortly after the milestone of over one million account holders had been reached.

My Role

I was the lead user interface and interaction designer, working with a business analyst during the definition, user research and analysis phases, as well as programmers in the validation phase, who built interactive prototypes for usability testing based on my wireframes.

Call center representative were fielding many questions that were the result of customers not being able to find the information they needed, even though it was available online. Additionally, there were still a number of straightforward financial transactions that required the assistance of a call center rep.

The purpose and goals of the redesign were:

• Improve findability of account information by updating the site navigation scheme.
• Handle the discrete steps of financial transactions in a modal fashion.

The main questions we investigated were:

• What are the categories of information that users are seeking?
• What are the various tasks/actions that users want/need to perform?
• How do we differentiate task flows that are purely informational from those that comprise a sequence of steps within a financial transaction?

Our primary research activities were contextual inquiry and one-on-one interviews.

Based on user interviews and observations, we concluded the following:

• An important aspect affecting the success of the project would be informaton architecture: making it easier for users to find the information they need.
• Users prefer ubiquitous navigation schemes, but will tolerate having navigation options removed when necessary for the integrity of performing financial transactions.
• We decided to focus on improving the navigation scheme through ubiquitous navigation menus where possible, while also determining how that navigation scheme would need to be modified when users are performing financial transactions.

Two menu systems: banner menu for site-wide options, and sidebar menus for section-specific options.

Modal pages for financial transactions, where site-wide navigation options were removed and the choices at each step were to either complete this step and proceed to the next one, or cancel the transaction.

Branding/color palette was predetermined by graphic design agency; the design phase was all about information architecture, user interface design and task flows, and ensuring the integrity of financial transactions.

User testing in state-of-the-art usability lab; two rounds of testing with interactive prototypes to validate the design in the presence of stakeholders.