Simplification as the Guiding Star for Navi’s Design Process
The NAVI AMC platform has embarked on a critical mission; getting millennials interested in investments and mutual funds. The crux of this mission is to ensure that this target audience understands financial terminologies and to ease the consumer journey through user-centric design.
Here are a few insights from my journey spearheading a necessary merger between user-friendly aesthetics and critical information.
Insight into the UI/UX Design Process at Navi
The design process for the AMC platform began with user research and understanding the target audience, defining personas and their pain points, helped us to design user-centric solutions.
The design team gained a comprehensive understanding and awareness of terms used in mutual funds and what was inhibiting investments through surveys and telephonic interviews. Our findings revealed strong information clutter; too many portals had an abundance of overwhelming information.
Another key concern for us was getting millennials, i.e. individuals between the ages of twenty-five and forty years old, interested in mutual funds. Professionals within this age range have both the spending power and the need for investment opportunities that help secure their futures. Our aim was to not only spark an interest in mutual funds but also introduce a strong action plan with measurable results, empowering our customers to take control of their finances.
To simplify the process, we zeroed in on a customer-centric design that allowed the first touchpoint for entry users, the landing page, to cover pertinent information only without any transactional feature. This included information like terminologies, FAQs, and requirements to maximize UX.
Introducing the Design System
Design systems incorporate both UX/UI considerations to craft integral components. These include everything from color palettes to typography to element design to overall design language. The intention is to create a dynamic environment that not only highlights company objectives but also encourages users to spend more time within the space.
We began by conducting internal and external research with a focus group through MCQs and telephonic surveys, which gave us invaluable insights into their financial acumen, investment preferences, insecurities, etc.
Competitive analysis and SEBI guidelines around colour palettes for CTA’s (call to action) helped us simplify facets, stay compliant and form a cohesiveness with the existing sister companies.
Crafting a functional yet customer-friendly look to the page involved minimizing sharp edges, creating soft CTA buttons, and introducing illustrative elements. We created a mockup of the UI for both the mobile and desktop applications, experimented with colour palettes, and introduced various themes.
The simplification came from understanding the process. Wireframes had to be crafted to establish a smooth flow of the various pages. We were quick to understand what was necessary, what was nice to have, and work on building out of need. Once approved and verified by the stakeholders, the construction of a more permanent structure began.
Conclusion
We were clear on our vision; the UI and the UX had to be customer-friendly, so even individuals with minimal to zero understanding of mutual funds find the ease of use on the Navi AMC platform. We felt no reason to overcomplicate the experience of the platform and stayed away from UI/UX trends like glass and neomorphism, which are great for niche markets. We are not a niche company; scalability and wide acceptance are important to our goals as a company, hence simplicity was our best bet for a great customer experience. And like every product that Navi introduces, the AMC platform too will scale to great heights, with a customer-centric approach to accessible and fast financial services.
“While designing the Navi Mutual Fund platform we were clear about one thing, to keep it simple. Our research and analysis into both the target market and global financial service products market helped us understand the need to educate our consumers about financial terminologies and simplify the process by cutting out the clutter on our platform. Read on to know how we approached the UI/UX for the AMC platform.”
- Divya Jyoti, UX Designer
