A smart assistant learns the importance of trust

Challenge:

• Help a financial services firm test a beta version of their mobile app’s smart assistant feature to develop the future development areas & ultimately, encourage user adoption upon its launch

Approach:

• Execute weekly, iterative testing of prototype over 7 weeks (including pre-test & post-test measures) to identify user pain points & provide real-time, ongoing feedback for improvements

• Utilize emotion mapping techniques to complement users’ functional & emotional experiences with using the mobile app’s smart assistant feature

Moment of Clarity (Solution):

• Show how this smart assistant can be a “trusted expert” to users & what makes it different from the big players in the smart assistant space (e.g. Google, Alexa)

• Emphasize the need to define the smart assistant’s key areas of expertise in order to move forward with a more narrowed focus for future development

Impact:

• Prioritization of technical & NLU (natural language understanding) features to fix before next product launch

• Help client-side development teams gain empathy for users & build supporting evidence for work done & work to be done via video & audio reels of user feedback

• Co-creation of ideas for ongoing development of the value proposition, customer personas, & product roadmap for the smart assistant

Role: Project Lead

• Led scoping, pricing, & execution of work

• Oversaw & managed the work of 1 junior team member

Timing: 8 weeks