Task:   BEHAVIOUR TYPES
Type:   USER RESEARCH
Role:   PROJECT LEAD
Duration: SPRING/SUMMER 2018

SUMMARY

A new way of viewing segments within savings and investment. I was driving the process of developing and rolling out a new segmentation model based on behavior, financial knowledge, attitude towards banks, and interest in handling personal finances. The behavior type project is a result of a transformation on how to understand and approach the savings and investment market in the Nordic countries - from a demographic focus to a behavior-driven approach.

Nordea's segments were previously based on only demographics combined with the number of investment trades a customer executed in a year and the customer's assets under management. To understand the real customer needs as well as the customers' pains and gains within savings and investments, a focus on behaviors was a big need if Nordea should succeed with the customer-centric approach. The challenge of this project was to change the internal perspective on segmentation from a demographic focus to a more behavior-driven approach.

A segmentation model with a detailed presentation of the 5 behavior types was created. To solve the UX challenge, the presentation deck contained recognizable components of each behavior type. This makes each behavior type easier to remember and apply in other cases.

An important element in creating these components was to make them actionable to help designers, product owners, and business developers deploy the content directly into other processes. 

To tackle the challenge of communicating the new behavior types a recognizable illustration for each behavior type was created. Instead of long descriptive text, an illustration can help to set the scene if the behavior type is presented in another context. However, it requires that people are familiar with the behavior type concept.

To make each illustration unique, a token was added to each behavior type. The different tokens relate to the behavior types' defining traits and their name. Each illustration made the process of empathizing with each behavior type more straightforward.

Moreover, the study provided an understanding of and insight into what drives people in Nordic to invest and what keeps them from investing. The drivers and barriers helped to identify when investing becomes relevant or why for some people, it does not become relevant, and which factors and triggers influence this. 

To solve the design challenge a strong methodological design was established, which ensured a data-driven process with both quantitative and qualitative research tools. The data collection and analysis were created and executed in close collaboration with Epinon, a leading Danish research company. The process consisted of 4 phases in the following order;

Mobile probe with 10 participants in Denmark. This is a qualitative research tool, where open-ended activities are given to a group of participants to learn more about their daily lives and environment. This brings novel insights into the participants.

In-depth interviews of 28 participants in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. The interviews provide tentative findings and create hypotheses that need to be validated in the quantitative study.

Web surveys with over 4000 participants in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The objective is to quantify the findings from the qualitative analysis and thus create generalizable insight and knowledge. In other words, test the hypotheses and secure a solid data foundation.

Analyze data from both quantitative and qualitative research studies. This step also included building a presentation template that would fit all the 5 behavior types and at the same time be easy to access and use in people's daily work. 

Roll-out the 5 segments to create a joint offset in Nordea to work customer-centric as well as creating empathy for the different customer types to facilitate decision making and help prioritize tasks.