Ivy Investments
A financial icon in institutional investing needed to portray trust and experience, while at the same time offering their customers the modern day tools and online conveniences they’ve come to expect.
Project: Ivy Investments
As a new brand under the Waddell & Reed portfolio of businesses, Ivy Investments needed to instantly portray a foundation of stability and thought leadership. The new website would offer users their insights, but also their easy-to-use investment and reporting tools.
Challenges
- Portray Ivy Investments as a thought leader in institutional investing
- Offer simple, straight-forward reporting tools for clients
- Function optimally and render consistently on all devices and at any resolution
My Role
UX Architect and UX Designer, conducting stakeholder interviews, producing an information architecture, high-fidelity wireframes, UI/Design, and user testing
Information Architecture
Ivy has a fairly standard offering of products presented here as investment strategies for institutional clients, but we wanted to highlight their vast experience and expertise, so we created a site structure that focused on their capabilities but also featured their unique perspectives.
Tools
Stakeholder Interviews, Visio
Features & Solutions
- Simple and clean, easy to absorb
- Presents content clearly and without pretense
- Blends and incorporates well within the company’s family of websites for other types of investing
Wireframes
Wireframes were created to demonstrate the intended layout and implied functionality for every identified page type. The wireframes were built to be navigated just like an implemented website so that the pages could be carefully vetted by the legal department and upper management.
Tools
Axure Pro
Features & Solutions
- Reporting tool was carefully prototyped to mimic all intended functionality to ensure usability
- Componentized structure and layout was planned to allow the client to easily build new pages and layouts depending on future needs
- Consistent and straight-forward calls-to-action are promoted on every page of the site
Designs
Using the firm’s brand guidelines, we attempted to create a design and layout that was reflective of a trustworthy newspaper or journal to project stability and to instill confidence in the user.
Tools
Adobe Photoshop
Features & Solutions
- Design is appropriately clean and crisp, reflecting the industry’s stalwart reputation without coming off as uptight
- Reporting tools are optimized for mobile devices, adjusting interface options to accommodate the smaller screens