The problem (and opportunity)

The HL Regular Savings online service was a major cause of calls to Helpdesk.

From 2018 to 2019, it generated over 56,000 calls and 55,000 emails from confused and unhappy clients.

We were tasked with improving the client experience, so to reduce calls to Helpdesk and allow HL to confidently market the service.

I worked in a large multidisciplinary team of 10+ individuals, including a User researcher, Content designer, Product manager, Senior UX designer, and front-end and back-end Developers.

My role

• Designing the user interface.

• Create prototypes of varying fidelities and functionality

• Communicate designs and proposals to stakeholders throughout the process.

• Support developers in the build phase.

• Observe and contribute to usability testing sessions.

Our process

Initial discovery

I joined midway through the initial discovery phase, so I was not present personally for all of these initial research activities. The findings, however, greatly impacted my work.

• Listening to over 200 calls from clients.

• Interviews with Helpdesk staff.

• An expert heuristic review of the existing service (which I was part of).

These allowed us to identify key problem areas, opportunities for improvement, as well as guide priorities.

Check: Are we designing the right thing?

One of the main points of confusion we identified was the way the total Direct Debit was calculated.

After carrying out competitor analysis, and exploring digital experiences from other industries, we decided a more conventional basket model might be more intuitive for our clients.

We conducted a round of usability testing with real HL clients, and I built basic prototype to test this hypothesis and concept.

We discovered that, overall, users found it very easy to use and understand.

There were also very useful insights that we could build on.

Designing it right

Once we were confident in the basic concept, we progressed to designing the new interface for users.

Initially I worked at a very high level, creating screen flows to map out all necessary functionalities, steps, user decision and system decision points - all in close collaboration with my team mates.

Once we were satisfied, I then focussed on the individual pages, moving from paper to wireframes (and back again); working particularly closely with our Content designer.

Further usability testing

We turned these designs into a mid-fidelity prototype, which we put in front of users.

This allowed us to test further changes we had made, and evaluate client understanding of our initial content and UI. It was also an opportunity to simply get more familiar with our users.

After testing, we refined our design, and I used existing HL components, UX best practice, and accessibility best practice to create a fully responsive, accessible, and polished UI.

At the end of the project, we were confident this was a significant improvement in terms of client experience than the existing service.

It hasn’t gone live yet due to shifting business priorities (which is disappointing), but through testing with users we’re confident that our solution is effective and usable, and by working in the open and continually sharing our work and ways of working with the wider business, we were able to demonstrate the value of a user-centred approach.