NEAMB Retirement Product Launch

Project Background‍

NEA Member Benefits (NEAMB) is a program that offers financial services, insurance, and investment advice to members of the National Education Association (NEA). Additionally, NEAMB provides discounts on travel, leisure, and instructional materials, as well as professional development services for educators.

NEAMB approached Hero to help launch a new self-advising retirement product for their members, aiming to create a new and improved retirement planning experience.

My Role and Initial Steps

I joined the project at the beginning of the Define stage. The initial user interviews with NEAMB members had already been completed. The interviews identified two groups:

1. Members already enrolled in the NEAMB retirement program.
2. Members not enrolled in the retirement program.

The Discovery Phase highlighted three archetypes: Savvy Investors, Unengaged Savers, and Planners.

My first goal was to understand the main problems we were trying to solve. I identified the following issues:

Key Problems

Business Problems

• Members wanting to sign up for retirement plans but unable to do so, lacking visibility of payroll slots for users or NEAMB.
• Providing members with information about their retirement options.
• 59% of NEAMB members were unaware of retirement programs, yet 6/10 were interested in investing.
  • They knew they needed to invest but didn’t know how or where NEAMB's solution fit in.
• Increasing enrollment in retirement programs.
• Addressing payroll slot data issues.
• The goal was to transition from 80% agent-assisted enrollment to more self-service enrollments.

User Problems

• The retirement enrollment process was manual, time-consuming, and involved multiple parties (member, advisor, school district, and district business manager).

Advisor Problems

• Sending qualified leads to advisors.

Team Challenges

• Navigating the legal complexities of the retirement industry, including IRAs and 403(B)s alongside NEAMB’s retirement products.
• Designing solutions that addressed the needs of four main stakeholders: NEAMB, Advisors, Security Benefit (SB - the retirement service provider), and NEAMB members.

Technical Constraints

• Maintaining the existing design system and global IA structure.
• Introducing new design patterns to be used globally throughout the site.

User Journey and Service Blueprint

To ensure we were solving the right problems, we expanded our initial user journey map into a service blueprint. This provided a holistic view of the user journey, including:

• Transferring user data from NEAMB to a third party with the member's acknowledgment.
• Ensuring visibility of advisors as the primary point of contact for the user’s offline experience.
• Capturing user data for future enhancements.

After completing the service blueprint, which involved multiple revisions with the client, I led a priority matrix workshop. We collectively decided to focus on a new questionnaire, calculator, and the MB to SB experience.

Tree Testing

Before the Design Phase, I led a tree testing activity to validate our assumptions about the proposed navigation. Tree testing simulated how users would find a particular page without design distractions. The existing IA proved problematic during testing, with users finding it difficult to locate the new pages, resulting in a low completion rate of 47%.

Iterating Based on Data

This highlighted the importance of research and data in building the right product. Armed with this information, we proposed global navigation recommendations and validated them during usability tests. NEAMB also used our recommendations for live A/B testing.

We introduced new page names that matched users' mental models and local navigation within the retirement experience, adhering to the client's request to maintain the global site structure.

Usability Testing

To reduce risk, I advocated for early usability testing with low-fidelity designs. We broke the tests into batches derived from the critical paths identified in the service blueprint. We conducted a series of low-fi design reviews with the client, covering all the new pages and the IA design. Usability tests with NEAMB members, representing a subset of identified personas, resulted in an 87% success rate.

Using Research to Fuel Design

User interviews revealed that understanding retirement complexities was a major issue. We moved educational content from SB to MB, with SB serving as the final step for enrollment. This strategy allowed educators to learn about retirement before enrolling, supported by earlier interviews.

Final Design

To present information clearly, we introduced progressive disclosure, allowing users to get a snapshot of a topic with the option to dive deeper. We added primary and secondary buttons for enrollment actions and new design patterns for global use. The new page structure told a better story, educating users with necessary information and reinforcing enrollment with mid-page CTAs and trust factors. Common components ensured consistency, and sticky navigation with page anchors improved user experience.

We introduced a natural language form to help educators refine their selections, a collapsible navigation for mobile, and a new tabbed component to highlight prominent products. When users clicked "enroll," an interstitial page appeared, similar to the Facebook login popup, informing them they were leaving NEAMB for a third-party site. This built trust and credibility, reduced user confusion, and introduced the advisor who would follow up with the new lead.

The redesigned self-advising retirement product achieved significant results:

• Increased Enrollment: There was an increase in enrollment rates for the new self-advising retirement product compared to the previous agent-assisted process.
• Enhanced User Satisfaction: User feedback indicated improvement in satisfaction with the retirement planning experience.
• Improved Usability: Usability tests showed an 87% success rate, indicating that users could easily navigate and use the new system.
• Higher Engagement: There was an increase in user engagement with the new retirement content and tools, demonstrating the effectiveness of the educational strategy.
• Increased Awareness: Awareness of NEAMB’s retirement programs among members rose, addressing one of the initial business problems.
• Efficient Process: The new process significantly reduced the time and effort required for members to enroll in retirement plans, improving overall efficiency.

These results demonstrate the successful implementation and positive impact of the new self-advising retirement product, fulfilling NEAMB’s objectives and enhancing the user experience for their members.