It’s always a good sign when users experience your work and get in touch because they like what you’ve done. When the marketing team at Henderson Global Investors saw the Ridgeworth app, they contacted ddm for a proposal on a similar public app. The financial team brought me in to do some initial spec work to land the account. I conducted a content inventory on the corporate Henderson site and pulled together a quick interactive prototype for the first sales meeting. The main goal of the meeting was to show the Henderson marketing team that I understood financial advisors and wholesalers as user groups and could design an intuitive app that would serve their needs.

The interactive prototype I pulled together in a weekend along with with the presentation I gave during that sales meeting enabled us to land the account. As soon as the contract was signed, I was off and running. I conducted a design heuristics analysis of their current web presence as they had no other interactive elements to their marketing strategy. I conducted interviews with key stakeholders within the company about business model, goals for the project and constraints. Although I was unable to get contact with their end users for interviews, I did gather as much information about who the stakeholders saw as their users. I managed to get their team to stick to information architecture that was both accessible and useful to their main user base. I constructed personas, their hypothetical mental models and then finally static wireframes. Different members of the marketing team remarked at several points how much they enjoyed working through that process with me and were extremely satisfied with the end result.

Following approval of wireframes, I moved on to visual design. Taking the design heuristics analysis together with different interviews I had conducted with stakeholders, I proceeded to create “inspiration boards” and Styletiles. I intended to present those, together with visual design concepts to the client. I found that by sharing each step in the decision making process and tying their feedback into the visual design concepts helped the client understand that they were involved to a high degree and helped me gain their trust as a professional.

The project is currently in development and will be released to the public in the winter of 2012.

Wireframes

Home Screen – Multiple messaging areas for the marketing team to flex their muscles and a swipeable tile area for navigating through Henderson’s twelve mutual funds.

Fund Screen – A reward/risk curve allows a user at a glance to see which fund match their interests. All funds are also listed below in a swipeable tile area.

Visual Design

Home Panel – First draft. Turned out to be a little bit too busy, too much going on, visual hierarchy not defined enough.

Home Panel – Approved Design. More emphasis given to the messaging tiles at the top of the screen. Clearly defined interaction.

Literature Library – Any mutual fund company lives and dies by literature. The library was a secure and affordable alternative to Dropbox that allows for wholesalers and financial advisors to have all Henderson’s literature with them on a mobile device. Users can also create groups or “lists” of assets (literature, videos, mp3s) for ease of reference.

Responsibilities

Account Management, UX, IA, Visual Design and Project Management