We know, based on feedback from our advisor community, that updates and tips on how to make the most of our product are always appreciated, so this post is to inform you of all the great work going on behind the scenes to enhance the user experience of the myprosperity platform. This week, I sat down with Elice Pace, Senior User Experience Designer to talk about the product. Most of you will never have met Elise, who is part of the talented product team working on the continuous improvement of the platform. Originally from Alabama in the US (yes, we will travel far and wide to find the best talent) Elise has been with myprosperity since the start of 2020.

Being based in Melbourne, she has unfortunately spent most of her time in lockdown since starting with the business but that has not curbed her passion and enthusiasm for tackling the very important work of improving the user experience of our product. Elise has been working on a project to undertake a face-lift of the Advisor Portal. Following a major exercise to drastically improve the client experience in the Wealth Portal, both desktop and mobile, we’ve identified the aspects that need attention and many of these stem from lack of consistency and usability across various features.

Elise spoke about “human-centred design”, which is a relatively new concept in software development, that takes user experience to a whole new level. According to Elise, this concept involves designing a product’s user journey with the human (user) at the very centre of it, so that you are always considering their feedback to inform the design and subsequent testing at every stage of the build. Ultimately making it easier, and less of a cognitive stress for the user to navigate the platform and complete the tasks they came to do. Over recent months, Elise has been heavily engaged in research and user testing with existing users and those that have never used the product before. In this way, she has been able to develop a clear and broad understanding of the barriers and pain points for anyone who uses the product, to then redesign aspects of the interface that will resolve these.

It starts with ensuring that all screens and functions within the Advisor Portal have a consistent look and feel. “Creating designs that are consistent is critical, so that our partners know where they need to go to perform tasks and be intuitive. We are focused on features that users will use and not just something that looks right but something that makes sense and works”.

To that effect, you will notice some changes when you log into the Advisor Portal today, starting with Client Goals and To-Dos. A more streamlined design makes the interaction simpler and more intuitive. Other improvements include the ability to sign existing documents that have already been loaded in the platform, and an enhanced document flow in the Documents section.

According to Elise, this is just the start. The roadmap for simplifying and developing greater consistency across the Advisor Portal extends through to Christmas, so you can expect to see uplifts in the usability and design across all features.

We also touched on our latest, and soon to be launched feature, “Rooms”, which has been spoken about over the last few What’s New at myprosperity webinars. Many partners have already had the feature turned on, and the feedback has been awesome, so we are very excited about its launch in November. According to Elise, “Rooms allows an adviser to engage with clients and other financial professionals in real time. You can invite other people into a Room to get work done. We’ve created a space where that can all happen in one area”. More on that over the coming weeks.

As we continue on our quest to lead innovation in client portal technology, it is great to know that we have amazing and talented people like Elise doing the hard yards of cycling back over previously built features to continually improve them, and implement design with user experience at the centre of it.

Watch the full interview below.