Project Role
Lead UX Researcher
Company
FINNOMENA, Thailand
Duration
Jan 2021 - May 2022
(1 year and 5 months)
Project Summary
Finnomena is a digital wealth management platform that provide comprehensive solutions for mutual fund investors of different investment levels and goals. It focuses on providing investment, financial advisory services to individuals. Finnomena UX Research Framework was integrated into the existing product development process to acquire holistic insights into both internal and external users through the utilization of UX activities. It enabled team members to generate UX-related tasks more easily and effectively.
Project Objective
Implement processes that enable product development teams to effectively gather insights, needs, and pain points from real users, ensuring user feedback is systematically integrated into product improvements.
Support UX team members by optimizing and streamlining the processes required for performing UX tasks, increasing efficiency and productivity in delivering user-centric designs.
Advance the UX maturity level at Finnomena by fostering a culture of user-centered design, continuous improvement, and cross-functional collaboration, ensuring UX practices are deeply embedded within the organization.
Desired Outcomes
Less time spent on UX and research tasks
Increase stakeholder satisfaction
Increase in implementation of actionable research result
Problems Found and Challenges
"How Can Finnomena Elevate UX Maturity in Developing a Customer-Centric Product Development Process?"
Back in 2017, as an early-stage startup, Finnomena faced the urgency to rapidly launch products to meet market demands. The pressure of time constraints and limited resources made it challenging to adopt a fully customer-centric product development approach. Consequently, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was launched without extensive UX research. Despite these limitations, the product found significant traction, primarily because it addressed the needs of a large target segment in Thailand. It capitalized on being the first mover in mutual fund investments specifically designed for younger generations with low investment expertise.
This strategic advantage allowed Finnomena to carve out a niche in the market and build a user base quickly. However, the initial product development process had its drawbacks. The lack of thorough research into customer needs, journeys, and pain points led to a user experience that was not seamless, exhibiting poor usability and generating significant negative feedback. These issues underscored the necessity for a more refined approach as the company grew. The reasons why we need to apply this now are as follows:
In 2022, with rapid growth and successful Series B funding, Finnomena finally gained the full capability to transform its processes and adopt a more customer-centric approach. I rejoined Finnomena as a Senior UX Researcher, and as we are ready to lay the foundation, the CXO and I are exploring how to effectively and sustainably integrate customer-centric approaches and UX activities into our existing product development.
We decided to apply UX Maturity Model from Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) to assess and measure our organization’s desire and ability to successfully deliver user-centered design. This model encompasses the quality and consistency of research and design processes, resources, tools, and operations, as well as the organization’s propensity to support and strengthen UX through its leadership, workforce, and culture. We found that we are currently at the "limited" level. With our current capabilities and a team of 10 members, we aim to reach Level 3 within this year.
Work Process
01 Explore The Problem Space
Before our UX team began revising the existing product development process, we conducted a thorough analysis of the workflow and gathered pain points from different stakeholders. We discovered that the current process does not incorporate any customer-centric approaches. To address this, we collected feedback, needs, and objectives from key stakeholders involved in product development, including product managers, software engineers, and UI designers.
02 Research on UX Research Methodologies
In determining which methodology to prioritize for our initial phase of implementing a customer-centric approach to existing product development processes, we face several considerations. Many of our products have not undergone testing, and we have yet to categorize our target segments. Therefore, our primary focus is on qualitative methods such as user interviews and usability testing. Additionally, we aim to leverage quantitative methods that are easy to implement, such as surveys, to gain insights into user behavior and measure customer satisfaction.
To ensure UX activities are integrated into each phase, I have structured our approach into three phases:
Identify Business Requirements,
Design and Test
Measure
Wireframes of existing and new features for Testing
03 Develop Customer-centric Product Development Process
To restructure your product development process to be more customer-centric, you'll need to integrate specific UX activities and research methodologies at each phase. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how to do this:
Identify Business Requirements: To understand the market, define business goals, and identify user needs, begin with stakeholder interviews to gather business requirements, goals, and constraints. UX activities in this phase focus on discovering information that will support the business team's decision. These activities allow stakeholders to understand customers and business requirements better. UX activities in this phase include: Customer Journey, Persona, In-depth Interview, and Ethnographic study
Design and Test: In the design and test phase, UX activities primarily help designers restructure the interaction flow and test the product performance more effectively. These activities ensure that the design solutions meet user needs and business goals. Key UX activities in this phase include:
Measure Product Performance: In Finnomena, where there are six product domains encompassing both web and app platforms, each managed by different product managers, implementing the HEART framework in the measure phase serves to align product metrics across these domains.
04 Integrate UX Activities into Real Projects
As part of our structured approach to ongoing UX research projects, we actively seek opportunities to integrate UX activities across each product domain. To facilitate collaboration, I have implemented weekly meetings where product managers can discuss their product challenges, allowing the UX team to provide valuable insights and recommendations. Furthermore, to enhance project management and transparency, I have leveraged Jira to oversee UX research initiatives, providing stakeholders with clear visibility into our capabilities and ongoing progress. Below is an overview of the impactful research projects we have conducted thus far:
Identify Business Requirement
UX activities in this phase are focused on uncovering crucial insights to inform strategic decisions for the business team. Through in-depth interviews, ethnographic studies, and contextual inquiries, stakeholders gain a deeper understanding of customer needs and business requirements. These efforts culminate in deliverables such as personas and customer journey maps, which play a pivotal role in segmenting target audiences and understanding their behaviors. These insights are invaluable for subsequent phases, particularly in product testing and recruitment efforts. Here are examples of deliverables typically produced during this research phase:
Personas: Detailed profiles representing key user segments, including their goals, needs, pain points, and behaviors of investors in different attributes such as investment expertise, customer type, and investment goals.
Customer Journey Maps: Visual representations outlining the end-to-end experience of users, highlighting touchpoints, emotions, and interactions with the product or service.
Example of a persona based on different investment goals:
The end-to-end customer journey of how subscribers evolve into investors in Finnomena
Design and Test
UX activities in this phase mainly help designers restructure the interaction flow and test the product performance more effectively.
UX activities that can help increase design efficiency
Information Architecture
Heuristic evaluation
UX activities that allow the team to test product performance
Usability Testing
Card Sorting
A/B Testing
Measure
In this phase, our team uses the HEART framework, which helps evaluate and measure product performance in specific aspects such as user engagement, satisfaction, task efficiency, adoption, and retention. Additionally, we launch surveys to measure user satisfaction in order to benchmark between each product iteration.
Result
Next Step
In 2022, driven by the expansion of our research team and the availability of data analytics systems within the organization, our team will deep-dive into quantitative research activities, such as user behavior analysis, A/B testing, and multivariate testing. To ensure the sustainable scaling of these research activities, we will iteratively improve the research process by leveraging quantitative metrics.