The role of service design when bringing a new product to market based on the example of SEB’s micro-investments

9. October 2024 Jaana Ziius & SEB team

For a beginner investor, the amount of information and options can be overwhelming, especially since the price of making mistakes is quite high. Still, one should not be robbed of the opportunity to invest in their future simply because they do not understand all the complex details involved in the field.

This is where SEB Bank saw the need for a new investment product that would be transparent, convenient and easy to use for both a beginner investor as well as an experienced one. As Trinidad Wiseman has long-term experience in the field of service design, SEB decided to involve our service design experts in the process of creating that new product.

If you wish to be certain that your new product or service meets the expectations and needs of your users, then we can help you. Read more about our approach to design on our website and contact our Head of Service Design, Liina.

In the following projects story we will talk more about how together with SEB Bank’s UX design team we designed a new investment product – micro-investments, which enables users to easily and conveniently invest in global ETFs.

The team’s challenge: design a new investment product in 6 months

Experienced users with financial knowledge can invest in various ways using their internet bank. However, the options available in internet banks tend to be rather complex and technical. So, the Robo-Advisor was created recently for less experienced investors, which uses a survey and then uses the results of that to automatically start managing the user’s investments.

Now, the need for a new product appeared that would fit between these two options by giving the user more freedom of choice about when and where to invest but would still be simple to use and understand for a new investor.

The new investment product had to meet three main requirements.

Support for decision-making. Users needed a convenient new option that would help them get started with investing or to add to their portfolio in such a way that would not require them to have a ton of specific knowledge, time or a huge financial contribution. Thus, it was necessary to figure out a solution that would display enough thorough and understandable basic information about investment options and provide a comparison between them.
A simple and transparent buying and selling process. Many users were afraid of the buying and selling process being too complicated and containing hidden fees. This made it important to create a buying and selling journey that would be as simple as possible, fast, and transparent about all costs involved.
Convenient portfolio management. Users wished to feel secure about the fact that after making a purchase, they could manage their investment portfolio by making informed decisions. This meant that we needed to design a detailed portfolio view that would also show upcoming transactions. Buying and selling had to be a simple process that would involve minimal fees (the transaction fee is 0,5% of the transaction total and there is no minimum fee).

The project was divided into two stages

During the first stage of the project, we mapped out the needs by doing the following:

In-depth interviews with the project’s key stakeholders.
Kano questionnaire for mapping the users’ expectations.
In-depth interviews and usability tests with the users.
As-is and to-be process analyses.
A competitive analysis of the competitors and trends.

One of the most important steps of the first stage was mapping the expectations of the Baltics users. As a result of this step, we found out which features the users value the most.

As a result, we found out which features users appreciated. For example, the Kano model divided the customers’ expectations for the investment product into three categories: 1) basic expectations (must be); 2) performance expectations (performance); and 3) surpassed expectations (excitement).

As a result of the in-depth interviews, we found out what challenges the users currently face when investing, what criteria they have for making decisions, and what their wishes were for the future.

During the second stage of the project, we worked on product design and testing, which involved the following:

A workshop for mapping and sketching solutions
Evaluating and prioritising the solutions with the project’s key stakeholders
Prototyping
Usability testing
Continuous monitoring of the requirements with the developers and lawyers
UI design
Supporting the creation of a public product page concept with the marketing team.

The highlight for the second stage was a 1-day workshop held in Riga, where we gathered all of the key stakeholders from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The lead group consisted of the UX researcher, UX designers, business developers, and representatives of the customer segment.

By the end of the day, we had created an initial draft of the product in Figma, which was tested with users at the end of the very same day. This helped us validate whether the project’s key stakeholders’ vision matched the users’ expectations for the solution.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT & ANALYTICS

STRATEGY & DESIGN

OTHER SERVICES

The role of service design when bringing a new product to market based on the example of SEB’s micro-investments

The team’s challenge: design a new investment product in 6 months

The project was divided into two stages

Stage 1: mapping out the needs

Stage 2: designing and testing the product

We agreed on the features and requirements for the MVP

Prototyping provided the designers with lots of freedom

We started work on the design by dividing the information into five topics

We designed the buying process to be as short and simple as possible

We designed a portfolio view that is as compact and convenient as possible

Out of this cooperation, a new investment product was born

In conclusion

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