Mobile Minded Research

The problem:

Finance is undergoing a technology revolution and the customer base is shifting from baby boomers to younger people that are more tech savvy. Capital One Investing was trying to target millennials as a demographic for product development. We were also merging two sides of the business with opposing customer bases – one that served people who used financial advisors for all investing decisions and one with do-it-yourself investors.

Along with this confluence of customers, I was promoting designing for customers based on behavior. Both business decision-makers and design needed a specific customer to make sound decisions.

I was on a small team that decided to test the assumptions about the millennial demographic by focusing on the traits the business believed set them apart and changed the focus to mobile-first customers. Our goal was to determine if there was cohesion in behaviors and attitudes to create a persona for both the business and design.

approach

First, I made a persona based on our assumptions. It was based on marketing research on millennials as well as interview information from a group of younger customers across the Line of Business. Information was given secondhand by those that participated in different studies.

research artifacts

Research Findings

Financial Map Protocol

My role & outcomes

I designed a research study by discussing methods with our internal consultants, Adaptive Path.

I ended up creating a more detailed persona based on the research, which was the millennial demographic and more mobile-oriented than older customers.

However, we found that attitudes were consistent with research the bank line of business had conducted. Attitutes towards investing didn’t really differ in this slightly younger age group, but their behaviors were different.

We adopted the new persona with the product and marketing teams.