This project presented a multilayered challenge, encompassing:

• Regulatory shifts impacting competition dynamics between retail banking and industry super funds.
• Evolving consumer demands and expectations, emphasising transparency and reliability.
• Technological advancements necessitating a focus on personalisation and scalability.
• Organisational change management requirements to navigate these shifts effectively.

The strategy involved assessing the effectiveness of all digital touchpoints owned by the Fund

In parallel, it was crucial to garner support from senior management. To accomplish this, the focused was on::

• demonstrating ability and knowledge around the digital landscape and,
• understand and articulate what the meaning of ‘digital transformation’ really meant to the group.

By demonstrating knowledge and expertise in my field and understanding their rationales, we were able to:

• nullify any misunderstandings
• unify and get a general consensus in the meaning of transformation to the Fund, and
• directly gather buy-in from the business without having made any key decisions.

Understanding the customer experience (externally)

A material design approach was used to replace the flat panel metro design for the website. We looked at various designs, but ultimately chose this methodology as we recognised a shift towards a layered design, and we wanted to incorporate animation and, subtle contrast in colours to delineate the hierarchal structure of information on a page.

Early designs took inspiration towards a Google search design. The rationale with this approach was to acknowledge the familiarity of search (Google) and facilitate on the user to search on the site.

The final design approach still heavily centered the user on search, but incorporated familiar traditional block-style design. The approach would enable the website to lift content from different parts of the site towards the homepage, thus enabling some personalisation to the returning user.

From a technology point of view, we also injected other analytic tools such as Hotjar, Crazyegg and Optimizely to monitor performance and optimisation initiatives.

Design for security

With this particular sprint, we investigated and ultimately came up with a multi-level security solution with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This multi-layer approach featured clear authority access enabling the Fund to be as secure as possible, which was further validated during the penetration-testing phase.

A slight pivot and delivery

Upon launch of the new website, it was decided between senior management that both old and new website would run concurrently. This was to enable a fluid soft launch and to mitigate any initial shock that regular visitors might have between the old and new website designs.

In addition, the soft launch, enabled us to identify any additional minor bugs which were fixed prior to a hard launch a few months later.

The result

After three months of launch we saw visitations rise above expected performance numbers and we saw other key performance indicators that we identified at the start of the project validate some of our initial assumptions during the ‘Discovery’ phase.

The learning

This project allowed me to go through all different experience levels, from researcher, stakeholder manager to, decision maker and tester. This will enable me to approach any task from website design to complex operation problems with confidence as I can use this experience as a “blue print” the draw upon.

One of the key experiences was leveraging UX user-centered design approach towards the build of the website. In addition, working with cross-functional teams to create a modified agile delivery approach that satisfied management needs whilst remaining on time and on budget to deliver.