AI Financial Advising Tool Powered by IBM watsonx
Designed an AI financial assistant integrated into a bank's website and app where users can get answers to their financial questions and be directed to appropriate bank resources. This AI-powered financial assistant improved financial literacy in Gen-Z users who otherwise got their financial advice from Reddit.
Role
User Experience Designer
User Experience Designer
Timeline
12 weeks (2023)
12 weeks (2023)
Company
IBM (Chicago)
IBM (Chicago)
Tools
Figma, Adobe, Mural, Enterprise Design Thinking
Figma, Adobe, Mural, Enterprise Design Thinking
Final Design
UI Design - Informed by UX Research
Throughout the design process, the team prioritized usability and accessibility, ensuring that the platform is easy to use for all users, regardless of their technical proficiency. The goal of these final designs is to identify and resolve any design issues early on in the development process, ultimately leading to a more user-friendly and successful platform.
UX Research
User Personas
Our team talked to an expert in the banking industry and did secondary research to understand the user groups along with the problems they have. He said there are four main groups of users but emphasized that there are two groups of people who face the biggest challenges:
Things to Focus on
Using the information we learned about the potential users and the financial advising and banking industries, we created some statements to focus on user problems.
Design a chatbot experience that goes beyond general responses and gives helpful and personalized answers.
Provide a non-judgmental experience for users revealing information that they would be embarrassed to admit.
Keep the users engaged in the process of reaching their financial goals for an extended period of time.
Design a chatbot experience that goes beyond general responses and gives helpful and personalized answers.
Provide a non-judgmental experience for users revealing information that they would be embarrassed to admit.
Keep the users engaged in the process of reaching their financial goals for an extended period of time.
AI Research
AI Response Research
To help the user to get the personalized answers they are looking for, we designed a feature that allows them to assign an importance level to specific parts of their question for the AI to focus on. We realized that people might have trouble explicitly quantifying the importance of parts of their question, so we redesigned the prompt field. Keeping in mind the goal of allowing users to get personalized answers, we used checkboxes with preset options that still gives the chatbot focused context.
Creating Business and User Value
Our first version of the chatbot answer was similar to what other chatbots look like. But then we thought back to how to achieve the unique value proposition of giving personalized financial advice while also directing users to relevant bank services. Instead of having the chatbot return a paragraph of text like existing chatbots already do, we decided to split the response up into three categories, helping the user easily understand the information. This also provides an opportunity to direct the user towards bank services that they might not know about.
Thanks for following along!
- Brendon Gross, Designer @ IBM
