Using Behavioral Finance Research to Redesign a Retirement Platform:
A literature review (secondary research)
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Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Project Overview
Project Overview
Product: Retirement saving and planning tool
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Method: Literature review (secondary research)
Stakeholders: Executives, product managers, designers, engineers
Outcome: Redesign strategy focused on disengaged retirement plan participants, and improved participant representativeness in following studies
Project Background
Project Background
The existing retirement website is undergoing a complete overhaul to deliver a modern look and feel, along with an intuitive and easy-to-use user interface.
An analysis of the legacy system revealed a clear pattern: a small segment of users actively managed their investments, while most participants rarely visited the site.
The product team initially planned to design the new experience primarily for highly engaged users. However, I questioned whether designing for power users would serve the majority of participants and proposed research to better understand retirement-planning attitudes.
Objectives / Research Questions
Objectives / Research Questions
What design will best serve retirement plan participants?
Provide the design team with actionable insights.
Research Strategy
Research Strategy
To inform the redesign, I proposed a two-phase research plan:
Generative research to understand how participants approach retirement planning
Usability testing of design concepts once solutions were developed
As a first step, I conducted secondary research in behavioral finance, reviewing academic and industry literature on:
Automatic enrollment
Contribution escalation
Retirement saving behaviors
Attitudes toward financial planning
Secondary research helped identify established behavioral patterns before conducting primary research.
Results: Two money attitude profiles
Results: Two money attitude profiles
Planners Avoiders
~45% of participants ~55% of participants
Enjoy financial planning Avoid thinking about finances
Comfortable with investment risk Risk-averse
Monitor investments regularly Rarely visit the platform
Seek financial data and tools Prefer simple guidance
Designing primarily for active investors would ignore the needs of the majority of plan participants.
Results: Design Brief Recommendations
Results: Design Brief Recommendations
1. Simplify the front-end experience
The homepage should provide clear guidance and avoid overwhelming users with financial data.
2. Layer complexity
Advanced financial tools and detailed investment data should be accessible but placed deeper in the experience for motivated users.
3. Reduce enrollment friction
Enrollment should be:
short
easy to understand
free of unnecessary financial terminology
4. Use behavioral nudges
Encourage:
employer match contributions
target-date funds
automatic rebalancing
Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash
Impact
Impact
The research reframed the redesign strategy.
Instead of prioritizing highly engaged investors, the design focused on supporting Avoiders, the majority of participants.
Key outcomes:
A simpler and more directive homepage
Layered access to advanced financial tools
Simplified enrollment flows
Research framework used in later usability studies
Retrospective
Retrospective
This project demonstrated the value of secondary research in UX strategy.
Behavioral economics research already contained strong evidence about how people approach retirement saving. Synthesizing this literature allowed us to identify user behavior patterns quickly and inform design decisions before conducting additional primary research.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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