Automatic Required Minimum Distribution
Simplifying retirement taxes
Case Study: A tool for clients who are aged 72 and older who want to “set and forget” their Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) online.
Overview
Once an individual turns 72, they have to take a Required Minimum Distribution out of their retirement accounts each year. The Auto RMD Experience was designed responsively for the web to allow users to set and forget their RMD each year to prevent tax consequences.
My Role
I partnered with a content strategist for this project. I was responsible for defining the workflows, detailing the use cases, and producing all design deliverables.
The Process
Defined workflow: The project began with diagraming the total flow of the experience. This laid the foundation for the team to understand all of the decision points and inputs needed from clients.
Comprehensive Design: With the flow defined, I was able to create a responsive design for all of the scenarios. This comprised of 5 steps, with multiple decision points and sub-steps, totaling over 125 screens.
Test & Iterate: Designs were tested, validated, and iterated upon with users and stakeholders. User testing was conducted via usertesting.com.
Flow Breakdown
The Auto RMD tool was broken down into five primary steps, and designed to be responsive across different form factors.
In order to chunk out the experience, users are presented with additional information and inputs as they make decisions. These provided screens convey the “happy path” for the overall experience but do not show all of the inputs users are required to make, error handling, or instructional information which were also designed.
Results
Customer research informed us that a portion of the client-base still wanted to call in to complete this transaction. With that information, the experience was expanded to be utilized as both a client-centric experience and an internal tool, allowing the customer service team to use this flow to set up Auto RMDs for clients who called in.
Summary
A responsive experience was created to allow clients aged 72 and older to set and forget their required minimum distribution. This stepped process works across phones, tablets, and computers. The Auto RMD improves the client experience by allowing them to manage their distributions at their convenience, without needing to call in and work with a T. Rowe Price associate.
