Honest Dollar
Full redesign of the acquisition and onboarding experience.
Project overview
Details
Client: Goldman Sachs
Company: Accomplice
Year: 2017
What is Honest Dollar?
Honest Dollar is a Goldman Sachs product focused on creating an accessible approach to retirement savings. The company launched with a vision of creating a path to retirement accessible enough that consumers can enroll and save using their smartphone.
Team
Design lead: Paul Russo
Product strategy and management: Olivia Hayes
Design: Danni Kirchoff & Miranda Petrosky
My role
Research / competitive analysis / information architecture / concepts and wireframes / interface design / style guide / prototyping / development support
After Honest Dollar’s initial launch in 2015, the company was acquired by multinational investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs. As Honest Dollar’s agency of record, our new business partners reached out to us to help identify opportunities across the website and product with the goal of increasing new customer acquisition.
We identified an under-served audience in freelancers, self-employed individuals, and small businesses, and set out to create an experience that would build trust and financial literacy, empowering our target to take control of their finances.
My first task after joining the team was to research the fintech landscape for similar products. This allowed me to familiarize myself with the offerings and messaging of other digital IRA services and to collect inspiration for the look, feel, and voice of this new version of Honest Dollar.
From there, I worked with my teammates and stakeholders to identify a general direction for the redesign effort and began to develop the information architecture, wireframes, and high-level content.
Once we had the content blocked out with the tone and goals established, we began working with our marketing partners to flesh out the copy so that it aligned with the approved wireframes.
Meanwhile, we had honed in on a look and feel for the site that reinforced the trustworthy, but approachable nature of Honest Dollar. Using our new type styles and colors, I translated the wireframes into higher fidelity comps while recording reusable patterns and lockups in a style guide to be used across the product ecosystem.
Illustrations by Stephanie Ciccone
The final touch to the design system was the introduction of illustrations across the product to highlight a few of our audience archetypes and reinforce the ease and simplicity Honest Dollar offers.
With the website wrapping up, we applied the new styles and same principles of jargon-less, accessible language to the product onboarding flow to reduce abandonment and create a seamless experience between the acquisition touch points.
Finally, once we had successfully shepherded prospects into the funnel and through the sign-up process, we needed to continue to offer the same quality of service when it came to funding and monitoring accounts.
From the dashboard, users have access to their information as well as their answers to the initial regulatory and investment profile questions. Should their situation change, they are able to change those responses at any point and receive a new portfolio recommendation.
When it was all said and done and each error state and edge case was accounted for, we at last had a modern experience optimized for our target audience, from lead to user. Upon Honest Dollar’s relaunch, our efforts were rewarded by it nearly doubling its user base.
