Franklin Templeton Investments Sites

Overview

I led a small team which redesigned a suite of sites for  Franklin Templeton Investments.

We created a responsive system for US retail, international, institutional sites which better showcases thought leadership and the brand, dramatically updates the visual design, and presents funds in compelling new ways.

My Role: Design Director
Facilitate the overall process; articulate design vision; workshop planning and facilitation; hands-on design and prototyping

Other Team Members: Sr. UX Designer, Sr. Visual Designer (part time), VP Product Management (Franklin), Product Manager (Franklin), Project Manager

Redesign Goals

The high-level goals of the redesign included:

Better showcasing the brand and thought leadership content
Creating a scalable system with flexible templates
Enabling clearer, more compelling ways to explore funds
Updating the overall visual design

Showcasing Thought Leadership

After identifying the goals of our redesign, we created proto-personas and key scenarios related to thought leadership content.

I led visioning workshops where stakeholders sketched ideal experiences of finding and using thought leadership, using the proto-personas as characters. These sessions gave us a deeper understanding of user needs.

Based on insights from our visioning workshops, we sketched alternative approaches to content and organization. And considered approaches to add visual interest to the thought leadership.

Think →

Make →

Check →

Conceptual prototypes and user stories enabled us to get useful feedback from users and stakeholders.

We refined our UX designs and prototypes, and did remote testing with users. Some of the highlights of our emerging strategy are highlighted below.

Thought Leadership Solution

Fund browsing

Another clear opportunity was to enable clearer, more compelling ways to explore funds.

The existing experience for browsing and searching was awful, with no ability to immediately filter or search. An advisor who wanted to view by price vs. rating would need to use separate views.

Here’s a look at how we approached this challenge. We surveyed the existing fund content: funds types and fund data that needed to be displayed.

We explored different models for browse and search. Right away, we combined disparate tables into one tabbed model, and integrated type ahead search with previews. We tried to push and explore new ways of browsing, but as we put these in front of stakeholders and a few advisors, we decided to stay traditional to match customer mental models.

Fund Overview Solution

Fund Detail Screens

The fund detail screens also needed redesigning – as did the link between browse/search and fund details.

As illustrated in this adaptation of a prototype we put in front advisors, the keys to our approach were to:

Prioritize and establish clear hierarchies of data, which we determined through SME interviews, and with feedback from advisors.

Simplify presentation of data by layering it and displaying it progressively

Unify content for funds in one scrolling page. (Stakeholders were concerned about this approach. We validated the effectiveness of this through user research.)

Visualize data wherever possible, to tell the story of the data and bring it to life.

Based on user feedback, we adjusted the placement of the tabs on the fund detail screens. We placed fund overview info within a “Summary” tab and moved the tabs to the top of the screen.

Fund Details Solution

Responsive, Flexible System

We needed to create responsive designs for not only the US retail experience, but also international institutional sites. So along the way we began creating a system of modularized connected content. We workshopped content priorities with stakeholders and subject matter experts, and created low-fi mockups of key patterns and options for different countries.

Brand Design

We transformed the visual design of the sites, introducing rich photography and blocks of color. Here are some early visual explorations, and an excerpt from the style guide we created.

Impact

We created a responsive system for US retail, international, institutional sites which supports customers and the business by better showcasing thought leadership and the brand, dramatically updating the visual design, and presenting funds in compelling ways. Visit Franklintempleton.com

More information is available for in-person presentation.

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@ DAVE ERESIAN, 2019