Morningstar - MoneyTalk

Money is one of the primary causes of stress for investors; yet, financial advisors receive very little training and support in coaching clients through emotional hurdles. Financial therapy, a growing specialty in the financial advice market, uses therapy techniques to focus on the emotional aspects of money. My team in the Morningstar behavioral science innovation lab wanted to draw upon the expertise of financial therapists to create an app to teach the principles of one specific technique called Narrative Financial Therapy.

User Problems

“We get caught in the same disagreements about money over and over. Both of us have things we think the other shouldn’t be spending money on. For me, it’s my husband’s car. There’s always something he’s buying for it.” - quote from an investor interview

“I just wish I knew how to get us through these disagreements.” - quote from an investor interview

Discovery

I started by conducting user interviews to learn more about the kinds of financial stresses people were feeling and what coping skills they were using to get through. Here are two key findings of my user research: 1) Many respondents felt shame when it came to money; 2) The majority of respondents felt that money was an intimating subject to talk about with their partner.

We used the research outcomes to inform our design thinking workshops with stakeholders. Our goal was to use a content-first approach to the design discovery, including the use of activities such as speech bubbles where workshop participants take turns role-playing to understand how users might talk about these subjects. We also workshopped different metaphors to help guide us as we started ideation.

Competitive Research

I researched tools in the interactive therapy space. This is a growing market with a lot of apps to help with stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. Although we were already thinking about our prototype as a chatbot-style tool, I also researched other segments of the market such as meditation and relaxation apps like Headspace.

Ideation

I created a user flow of the sequence of events in the experience and iterated on this flow based on stakeholder feedback. Then I ideated on how each of those steps might be completed. In conjunction with my team’s researcher, we put together a concept prototype. With this tool, we were able to simulate a chatbot conversation and test with potential users.

Wireframes

Based on concept testing feedback, I went through several rounds of wireframe testing and iteration. Because these wireframe prototypes were static screens, it was difficult to get a good sense of the users’ interactions; however, the testing did help to identify some areas of improvement in the content and user flow.

Outcome

After the completion of the wireframes, I worked closely with the other designer on my team to finalize the mock-ups. I served as the team’s scrum master and project manager as our development team implemented the designs and built the interactive prototype.

We tested the prototype in a field study conducted through our morningstar.com site - with the research objective of understanding if the experience improved a user’s relationship and/or financial wellbeing. Our researcher measured this in a randomized control trial with a pre-and post-survey. With mixed results from the field test, the project shifted to a workbook version of the experience for financial advisors to administer with their clients. Our team continues to look for opportunities to incorporate our learnings into the Morningstar product offering.