Enhancing Client Portal Features Through Live Research
How real-time feedback from advisors shaped the future of client portal design
Role — Senior Designer & Project Lead
Other Team Members — 1 Junior Designer, 1 Product Manager
IN SUMMARY
What better way to do discovery than asking advisors as they pass by in a conference hall, “What features would you add to build your own client portal?” In 2023, Morningstar set out to combine two products Morningstar’s Turn-Key Asset Management Platform (TAMP) and Morningstar Office. These advisor centric platforms also had investor facing portals. My team was tasked with first reimagining, then building the new combined US Wealth Platform Client Portal.
The Morningstar Investment Conference (MIC) fell close to the beginning of our discovery process so my director secured a spot for us in the “Innovation Lab” portion of the conference hall that showcased six innovative projects across Moringstar. We were excited to be chosen for that area and set off planning a research activity. As the senior designer on the team, I took on all the planning, execution, and analysis of the results. I had the help of a junior designer for the actual activity and a product manager for the note taking.
Setting up the research activity
With the innovation lab booth secured, I started to ideate on type of activities that our team could run out of a small space. We knew we had heavy competition with other great products from Morningstar trying to get advisors to stop by their booths. I wanted to have something large to bring them in, engage them, then ask them a few questions based on our outstanding research questions. Here are just a few of the questions I had:
We used competitive analysis to help narrow down which components to create. We also completed SME meetings that helped at to the list.
Component Design
I assembled a long list of potential features/components, created different fidelities of the sketches, and discussed with our team which to move forward with.
Activity Script
I created an activity script for the facilitators and note takers to ensure common data collection across lots of conversations.
Many of the questions I had centered around “What features do both advisors and investors want?”
This led me down the path of a create your own adventure type of activity. With the help of some of my colleagues in early planning meetings we came up with the basic structure of the activity. Bring advisors and investors (even though this conference was for advisors, many other people attend and we intended to ask them if they had investments, then ask them to participate) into the space, ask a few questions then have them set up their own client portal using mock feature cards on a big board meant to symbolize a screen. With that settled, I followed this path —
Component research
The Research & Analysis
The activity ran from Tuesday April 26th to Thursday April 28th at MIC in the Innovation Lab. We used shifts at the booth to facilitate and note take.
Understanding the data
I grouped the components into eight themes. Having some sort of portfolio analytic component in their portal was the most popular, with communication components coming in second.
For the specific components, Client Goal Area, Account List, and Charts were the clear winners. Out of the 34+ component cards, each was chosen at least once. This chart is breakdown of all the components that were chosen more than five times:
These charts were designed by me using Morningstar’s chart design library. The colors correspond to the eight categories in the above donut chart.
Themes from the Advisor and Investor conversations
-
Advisors were the most vocal on this point, calling back to their experiences for their reasoning.
On advisor mentioned “Client doesn’t want to spend Saturday looking at this.” Another referred to a competitor saying, “eMoney is too much – I like simple.”
Our quantitative data showed that the most frequent number (mode) of components per whiteboard portal was 4, and the average (mean) was 7.5.
-
The most repeated phrase surrounded “control.” This varied from control of which components to turn off and on to different client segments and “pre-made portals” for each segment.
Many advisors think about the prospecting phase as they key to getting the right style portal for their client. (Bonus points from some if we could automate that through a survey).
-
Advisors leaned towards asynchronous communication with their clients that required little overhead and time from the advisor. “Too much comms might be dangerous – they have a lot of retired investors who would call all the time with questions like “what does the SVB collapse mean for my investments” etc”
Non-conversation based communication methods were very popular. These looked like the task list component, document sharing, alerts, post-meeting notes, vision boards, and automated workflows.
-
The most investor shared quotes was “I want to know how I am doing” and “Am I on track”
We saw a want for peer comparisons, goal tracking mechanisms, and methods for determining what goals should even be on the list.
-
Many advisors mentioned wanting to cut down on ad-hoc communication through educational components, but hesitated when asked about AI.
Investors were interested in AI as a concept but were unsure about how to apply it to their financial knowledge or circumstances.
-
Most advisors wanted account aggregation, with only a few detracting due to aggregation breaking.
Only one investor called out aggregation specifically, but many wanted a full picture of their finances including linked accounts.
What came next
These insights were incredibly valuable for the initial designs. They informed out next steps of the discovery phase, low fidelity wireframing and journey maps. Here’s a screengrab from a slide in my stakeholder research share-out that informed everyone where we were in the new product development process.
Going beyond product impact
My design manager and I put together a quick display in the design atelier on the 14th Floor of the Chicago office. We wanted to showcase the power of in-person, large scale, and low fidelity research actvities. See the full pdf report here.
Some feedback collected from the end of the whiteboard installation and from activity facilitators:
“Overall, this was a really great activity. Participants were very engaged, and I think that is mostly due to the low-fidelity designs. When we show a prototype, they’re less likely to give honest feedback–whether they mean to or not–because it feels final. There’s no way to say ‘This looks great, no changes’ when there’s a blank white board in front of you.”
“I was thoroughly impressed by the number of participants we got this year—a clear result of the thoughtful, simple, and highly interactive exercise that was planned. The low-fidelity and hands-on nature of the activity allowed for maximum creativity.”