01. Conducting research
In order to better understand the world of wealth advisors, we visited 9 tax & wealth management offices in the DFW metroplex to conduct a blend of observational studies and interviews. After gathering a baseline of advisor data, we continued to interview 21 Avantax employees to identify opportunities both in software and service.
02. Making sense of the data
For 4 weeks, I huddled up in a room with my researcher (shoutout to Sana!) to affinitize the data from our field research. Affinity diagramming allowed us to organize the data by major themes and categories without losing the voice of our field research.
03. Defining the users
From the affinitized data, trends emerged amongst the offices and advisors that we visited. I represented these trends in two key personas which conveyed a few important ideas: that more experienced advisors focus less on growth, tax professionals are shifting their interests to wealth management, and that paperwork is an inefficiency.
"The most successful advisors don't do tax returns at all." - P1
04. Mapping the advisor journey
In addition to personas, the research allowed us to map a day in the life of an advisor. This map serves to highlight key points of interaction, mark advisor sentiments towards specific tasks, and propose opportunities for improvement.
05. Identifying tactical opportunities
Taking the same data but centering it around a workflow allowed us to illustrate user frustrations with Avantax's customer service and describe how transparency is vital to creating a better advisor experience.
