Challenge

• What problems were users trying to solve when managing their money?
• What questions do new first-time home buyers have over repeat home-buyers?
• Do people know who what a FICO score is or an ARM?
• What advice do people need when managing debt?

The Experience Dynamics team began by leading a strategic review of the business objectives with stake-holders at Key to better understand the companies marketing objectives. The Experience Dynamics usability consulting team began an in-depth review of competitor user experiences including what users might see from searching for financial services products on major search engines and portals. A competitive usability analysis report was created, outlining best practices from leading competitors as well as from the general Web search experience.

The next step was to establish target users to include in the field study. KeyBank provided market research segmentation profiles that were assessed for recruiting criteria and Experience Dynamics began recruiting KeyBank customers for the field study. Interviews were conducted with users from three distinct user groups.

Experience Dynamics interviewed and observed users in their home environments as they described problem-solving strategies, interacted with websites they turned to for help and described the issues and concerns they had about applying, choosing and managing financial products such as mortgages, car loans and student loans. Users were given a “card-sorting” task that helped gain insight into navigation, links and labeling organization.

The “day in the life” home visits yielded rich insights into the dominant “user profiles” that represented Key.com’s user profiles. Photos, video and research notes were analyzed and distilled into detailed profiles of what users wanted, what confused them and what features and tools they needed the site to have in order to succeed with KeyBank’s planning tools and resources. Experience Dynamics created “task-centric” design recommendations, in order to align functionality with the observed users goals and objectives, such as integrating calculators and helpful articles into the user’s natural navigation flow.