The brief
Sunny Day Fund is an innovative new short-term benefits system intended to provide middle and lower-income workers a buffer of $400-600 in emergency funds per year. Each month a small portion of a worker’s paycheck is squirreled away into a savings account managed by SDF. Each quarter a percentage of the worker’s total savings are matched by their employer.
Our team set out to redevelop the SDF landing page experience to more dynamically communicate its mission to American employers and American employees. Specifically, we set out to develop a design system, tone and voice guide, and high-fidelity prototype for the new SDF onboarding experience.
My roles
user Research
I planned the research strategy and managed the research team. I summarized all research findings into a 20-page Research Report for use by SDF’s future UX teams.
I conducted heuristic analyses, UX writing and discourse analyses, user interviews, contextual inquiries & usability tests.
I led with ethics and insured all human subjects research was collected ethically, all participants were given informed consent, and all data was managed confidentially during the study.
content strategy
I conducted a textual inventory and analyzed the lexical and narrative themes of SDF’s current non-authenticated landing page.
I created an extensive UX Tone & Voice Guide address methods for SDF to speak to their two primary users, how to manage talking points on a future blog, and how to present data consistently.
project management
I coordinated user research and interviews.
I produced and maintained project management task management systems, schedules, and a change log to maintain the scope of the project.
I facilitated an hour-long virtual Design Studio with my UX team, client, and their employees.
the research & background
Client requirements & initial assessments
Heuristic Analysis revealed several major issues with site navigation and the presentation of site content. SDF’s landing page and onboarding experience was far from a disaster, but there was a lot of work that could be done to increase a sense of discoverability and apply consistent design elements like CTA buttons across the site for streamlined experience.
Among our client’s requests (aside from incorporating the Fibinacci-inspired logo and orange-red color) was to incorporate a financial savings calculator on the landing page. It was challenging to find other organizations doing similar innovative work like SDF (!) but we did manage to find a handful of examples of calculators and plot elements on a C&C Analysis matrix to hone in on a winning approach for SDF.
UX WRITING STUDY: TEXTUAL INVENTORY & DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
SDF really needed a narrative of employee/employer symbiosis, growth, safety, and savings. In our initial meaning SDF leadership specifically wanted a content strategy that revolved around ‘freedom’ and ‘resilience.’ These two concepts were found to resonant best with SDF’s intended user audience by a previous research team.
I first conducted an informal comparative discourse analysis, comparing the types of language strategies and key terms SDF was using as compared with some of their direct competitors. As an example, SDF wanted to draw connections between their service and a 401(k) program, leading me to explore consistent linguistic themes between the Sunny Day Fund and 401(k) programs.
The image to the right was included as part of the proposed Content Strategy in the new SDF Voice & Tone Guide. As you can see an emphasis is placed on one of the two identified primary user groups (workers). Key words related to freedom and resilience like option, improve, or well-being are emphasized over words like emergency, benefits, or retirement.
INTERVIEWING & interpreting themes
SDF’s site was directed towards employees, with the idea that they would drive buy-ins and tell their employers about this benefits program. Our research suggested that this might not be the most effective user group to speak with. We conducted 12 interviews and selected participants using criteria developed in collaboration with SDF. Our research team interviewed American employees and employers in warehouse work, supply chain roles, healthcare tech, and construction.
One of the most surprising events early in the interview phase of this project was learning how many employees were unaware of what benefits programs their employers offered. One interviewee even remarked they thought they were the only one who knew their company offered a 401(k) plan.
Our richest insights came from interviews with HR representatives who are expert screeners of benefits packages. These insights let to the introduction of not one, but two primary personas as a working model for the design phase.
It was here we realize that two distinct on-boarding experiences needed to be crafted to address the requirements from both works and HR reps exploring the program.
The primary personas & journey maps
Our research suggested that the SDF landing site should be split between its two primary personas. Each would have a different experience that introducing them to the key purpose of the Sunny Day Fund and how it would affect their short-term savings, their collective financial stress levels, and their company culture.
While employers were undoubtedly one of the primary users of the Sunny Day Fund, Human Resources representatives were by and large the ones evaluating benefits packages for their companies, not employers. While both groups responded to SDF’s intended themes of freedom and resilience, HR Reps tended to be more focused on the trustworthiness of benefits programs while workers tended to be focused on well-being and quality-of-life improvements.
Journey maps and personas can be viewed below. While personas certainly have their weaknesses, the need to communicate the importance of expanding SDF’s reach to include HR reps made these materials handy tools for our clients to visualize the diverse audiences we hoped they could connect with.
DESIGN STUDIO & word mapping session
I ran a full on hour-long design studio for both SDF’s employees and our UX team. And truthfully, I expected this brainstorming session to be a nightmare. It actually went great.
One of the key concepts derived from this exercise was metaphor of the sun (employer/HR reps) and flower (employee). We realized this visual metaphor would be an effective way help our two primary personas humanize the other. We also realized this “growth” metaphor could be extended effectively into the content strategy of the site.
The design studio exercise gave us further information about developing the textual themes of the site. A brief automatic writing/word mapping exercise provided additional context to introduce textual themes around concepts like financial stress, freedom, trustworthiness, dignity, and resilience.
the wire flow & ideal paths
Before our design team got cracking on the brand new SDF experience, they produced these handy user flows as a roadmap. I began preparing narrative guides for each user and experimented with tone and voicing to test in prototypes.
the deliverables
design system
One of our key deliverables was this lovely visual design system. Gone are the days of ‘In the Red’-red being the dominant color of Sunny Day Fund but we did stick to our client’s wishes and make sure it played a clear supporting role in the overall visual scheme.
tone & voice guide
What would a visual guide be without additional textual guidance? Mail Chimp’s incredibly comprehensive and publicly available Tone & Voice Guide provided the basis for SDF’s own Tone & Voice Guide. Check out a copy of SDF’s Tone & Voice Guide here.
usability tests
Our usability tests left us with a lot of confidence that we’d found the right formula to help the SDF message resonate with its intended users. We did incorporate some tweaks here and there after the First Round to address some remaining confusing about the order in which information was presented.
final tweaks
A second round of usability tests suggested we were right on the money. You can find a few screenshots of the high fidelity mock-ups below.
the mock-ups
the outcomes
You can jump on over to Sunny Day Fund’s site to see our recommendations and deliverables fully implemented. We love to see it.
Since completing our work Sunny Day Fund has managed to expand its workforce by 30%. Sunny Day Fund has been featured in the Aspen Institute’s Seminar, DC Fintech Week, and were named a finalist for the Greater Washington Innovation Awards.
We’re all looking forward to watching Sunny Day Fund continue to grow and serve worker communities across the United States.