Bank of America Securities, Inc. (BofA Securities), previously Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is an American multinational investment banking division under the auspices of Bank of America. It is not to be confused with Merrill, the stock brokerage and trading platform subsidiary of Bank of America.
Bank of America Securities Mercury
Position: Vice President of User Experience and Product Marketing
Background
Bank of America Securities Mercury is a robust platform catering to 70,000+ users engaged in the complete trade lifecycle of financial products, from research to post-trade. This platform, managed by Bank of America's Global Markets and Technology division, plays a crucial role in generating a substantial revenue of $19 billion. However, it faces significant challenges, including the need to align and coordinate diverse internal departments and lines of businesses with unique user requirements and provide a consistent and seamless user experiences for executing time-sensitive and critical tasks.
Challenge
Mercury relies heavily on engineering solutions, resulting in clunky user experiences due to interference from legacy back-end systems. This hindrance affects the platform's potential to deliver essential and profitable functionalities. Furthermore, the consistency of platform image and written assets provided by different lines of business has proven to be challenging.
In response, Global Markets and Technology have invested in a complete transformation , introducing new features that empower users to manage themselves effectively. In addition to a complete user interface refresh.
Solution
Enter my role. As a design thinking and product marketing expert with extensive experience in an enterprise environment, I lead the UX strategy addressing these challenges head-on. Guided by thought leadership and data insights, I work collaboratively across Product Managers, Cyber security, branding, marketing, and developers to devise innovative solutions that pave the way for a new era of human-centric design within the organization. Together, we are ensuring ADA/WCGA accessibility requirements are satisfied, elevating the look and feel, and enhancing usability across functionalities to unlock its true potential in the financial market landscape.
UX and Product Marketing Use Case Scope
Objective
To enhance user experience, drive user adoption, and promote the value proposition of Bank of America Securities Mercury through effective UX and product marketing strategies.
1. UX Strategy:
a. User Research and Insights: Conduct in-depth user research to understand the needs, pain points, and preferences of Mercury platform users. Gather feedback through surveys, interviews, and usability testing to gain valuable insights for UX improvements.
Methodology employed: surveys to obtain quantitative data, UserTesting to obtain qualitative, behavioral and psychographic insights, and Glassbox to covert observation and to reduce investigation overhead.
b. User Journey Mapping: Map out the user journey to identify key touchpoints and opportunities for optimization. Identify pain points and areas where user experience can be enhanced to streamline the trade lifecycle process.
Methodology employed: Remote unstructured and structured group user interviews with users and stakeholders to gather qualitative information about the experience, as well as business driver and compliances requirements across multiple disciplines.
c. Information Architecture: Create a clear and intuitive information architecture that organizes content and features in a user-friendly manner. Simplify navigation and ensure easy access to essential functions, reducing friction and enhancing usability.
Methodology employed: informed by user goals, tasks, behaviors, and preferences, acquired in the user research and journey mapping, we conducted content audit, inventory, and ran an engagement analytics report to assess content relevance and usefulness to users. Outlined the journey of each user persona with their goals in mind to identified each information and functionality required at each stage of the user journey. We used card sorting to have users organize and categorize in the most logical and intuitive way to ensure the information hierarchy aligns with the user expectations and enables efficient navigation.
d. Wireframing and Prototyping: Develop wireframes and interactive prototypes to visualize and perform A/B test for new design concepts and user flows. Collecting user feedback tp Iterate and refine ensuring an intuitive and seamless user experience.
Methodology employed: Initially, created low-fidelity visual representations of the user interface, focusing on the layout structure and placement of elements created. Following, we introduced an interactive prototyping to demonstrate user flow and interaction and obtain design decision validation from cross-functional stakeholders.
e. Visual Design and Branding: Develop a visually appealing and consistent design language that aligns with Bank of America's unified brand guidelines. Incorporate user-friendly typography, color schemes, and visual elements that enhance the overall aesthetic and usability of the platform.
Methodology employed: Created high-fidelity wireframe (visual design iteration) focusing on structure and functionality incorporating all brand identity elements. Conducted moderated usability testing for deep insight into behavior and thought process, and unmoderated usability testing sessions to test intuitiveness of interface, allowing users and stakeholders to envision the end result and also evaluate the overall experience.
f. UX Design Ops: Created through documentation and guided guided developers through the specifics of the design system, conducted design reviews, identifying bottlenecks, development limitations, and led new iteration briefings to deliver new design to lower environments for QA testing.
Methodology: We utilized the agile methodology to enable real-time communication, fostering a shared understanding of design requirements and technical constraints. We followed an iterative and incremental approach, refining the design based on developer feedback and technical feasibility within sprints. Additionally, we conducted retrospective meetings to address challenges and make necessary adjustments in the collaboration process.
2. Product Marketing Strategy:
a. Value Proposition: Clearly articulate the unique value proposition of BofA Securities Mercury. Highlight its key features, such as best in-class research, real-time trade execution, comprehensive analytics, and seamless integration with other financial systems, emphasizing the benefits for users.
Methodology: Ethnographic research, and the user of Glassbox to observe user behavior in the website, in addition to engagement analytics.
b. Targeted Messaging: Develop targeted messaging tailored to different user segments within the 70,000+ user base. Craft compelling narratives that address the specific pain points and goals of each segment, positioning Mercury as the ideal solution.
Methodology: Using a user-centric approach, we employed the Value Proposition Canvas framework to visually map out the value proposition. This involved defining customer profiles, identifying jobs to be done, pinpointing pain points, and articulating the unique value the website offers to address those pain points.
c. Content Marketing: Create informative and engaging content, such as one-pagers, case studies, strategic power-point presentations, and video tutorials, that educates users about the platform's capabilities and best practices. Distribute content through various internal channels.
Methodology: We established specific goals for each target audience and worked collaboratively with product managers and client-facing stakeholders to create content that was clear, concise, accurate, unique, and visually appealing. We tailored the content to suit the specific format of each marketing collateral document.
d. User Onboarding: Develop an intuitive and user-friendly onboarding process to guide new users through the platform's features and functionalities. Provide interactive tutorials, tooltips, and contextual help to ensure a smooth and seamless user onboarding experience. In addition to live global trainings.
Methodology: We employed instructional design principles, breaking down complex concepts into manageable chunks and providing step-by-step guidance. We created a master document and adapted the content to offer a blended learning experience available on-demand in the portal or through scheduled training. User feedback played a crucial role in continuously improving the materials, with optimization reviews scheduled quarterly.
3. Measurement and Optimization:
a. User Analytics: Implement robust analytics tools to track user behavior, engagement, and satisfaction metrics. Analyze user data to gain insights into user preferences, identify areas for improvement, and validate the effectiveness of UX and product marketing initiatives. And, provide continuous implementation on user personas to increase content and tools relevance.
Methodology: We utilized a Tealium container to implement a blended analytics solution strategy involving Adobe Experience, Celebrus, and Glassbox across all of our channels.
b. A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing on key design elements, messaging, and user flows to evaluate their impact on user engagement, conversion rates, and overall satisfaction. Optimize based on the results to continuously improve the user experience and drive user adoption.
Methodology: In business as usual projects we used Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) to measure the impact of the best performing variant. In new business initiatives we used Sequential A/B Testing due to the time flexibility of projects or at times Pre-Post Test. Project requirement, budget and time were always the factors, when choosing an A/B Testing methodology.
c. Continuous Improvement: Foster a culture of continuous improvement by regularly collecting feedback from users, stakeholders, and internal teams. Use this feedback to inform iterative design updates and enhancements that align with user needs and business goals.
Methodology: Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles promoting a data-driven approach to decision-making.
By implementing a comprehensive UX and product marketing strategy, the BofA Securities Mercury platform can deliver a seamless and intuitive user experience that maximizes user satisfaction, drives user adoption, and solidifies its position as a leading solution in the financial trade industry.
Due to a Non-Disclose Agreement (NDA) in place, I cannot display prototypes or design deliverables. Please contact me to arrange a discussion specific use cases.
Mercury UX Use Cases
Self Service Entitlements for Mercury Portal
Objective:
The goal of this project was to empower customers using the Mercury Portal to manage their own users and entitlements, thereby reducing Bank of America's internal resource overhead and liability associated with user management errors.
Challenge:
Bank of America faced challenges with internal roles solely responsible for creating users and managing entitlements within the Mercury system. Each line of business has a unique user flow and requirements creating a significant overhead for the bank and potential liability for any errors. To address these issues, the Global Markets and Technology UX team took on the challenge of creating a solution that would allow external clients to manage their own users and entitlements independently.
Solution:
The team developed a new feature, later named, "User Management" that allows Mercury customers to have control over user onboarding and entitlements. Through a simple and intuitive user interface, external clients can now create, edit, and manage user details, entitlements, roles, and access to the entire Mercury system. By implementing this solution, the burden on internal resources reduced significantly, and Bank of America became liberated from the liability associated with user management errors.
Deliverables:
The UX team collaborated with the product management team and an experienced team of developers to implement enterprise application features, providing essential contributions to the project. The deliverables included:
1. Clear Requirements: The team collaborated with Business Analysts to establish clear requirements and ensure a unified user experience flow for the Self Service Entitlements feature.
2. Ideation and Information Gathering: Various information gathering exercises, such as ride-alongs and interviews with subject matter experts, were conducted to define the ideal future state for the feature. Ideation exercises, mental models, individual line of business user journey mapping helped in understanding user needs, pain points and requirements commonalities.
3. Wireframes: The team created wireframes to align development efforts and visualize the user interface layout.
4. High Definition Prototype: A finely-tuned, high definition prototype consisting of over 50 screens and interactions was developed to provide a comprehensive view of the feature's functionality.
5. Agile User Stories: The team created agile user stories to align the development process with the UX design, ensuring seamless collaboration during the sprint.
Extended participation in the project
6. Go-to-Market Strategy: I owned the go-to-market process alongside financial market product strategists. I was responsible for developing a comprehensive strategy to introduce our service to internal and external audiences. I crafted compelling messaging and positioning to effectively communicate the value proposition and drive awareness and promote adoption.
Throughout the process, I remained agile and adaptive, responding to market the targeted audience feedback to make data-driven adjustments to optimize our approach. As a result of the coordinated efforts and strategic execution, our feature successfully achieved our objectives.
7. Live Global Training: I took charge of creating internal and external training material, technical documents, and conducting global live trainings for all lines of business. The training resources were tailored to meet specific needs and delivered a consistent, engaging onboarding experience. Continuous improvement and feedback mechanisms ensured the effectiveness of our training initiatives and helped drive the success of our go-to-market strategy.
Result:
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of the Self Service Entitlements feature was successfully tested and delivered. It underwent rigorous usability testing in select lower environments, demonstrating its effectiveness to meet the defined success criteria. With the feature's successful delivery, we were able to retire old legacy systems, removing liability, and providing enhanced user experiences and improved functionality for our users.
UX Reboot and UI Refresh: Transforming the Mercury Platform
Background
The Mercury platform's engineering-driven nature and initial design caused challenges, leading to inconsistent experiences across different business segments. User-centric solutions were lacking, and unnecessary access to certain platform parts was common. The objective was a seamless front-end UX while retaining legacy back-end systems, obtaining approval from multiple internal businesses at Bank of America.
Challenge
Convincing divergent businesses to prioritize user needs and adopt a unified UX solution for better adoption and revenue generation presented a significant challenge. Navigating existing mindsets and processes was crucial for success.
Solution
Our vision was to create a front-end UX that simplified user tasks while preserving Mercury's underlying logic. By understanding user preferences and delivering content in their preferred format, we retained access to other areas of the Mercury Portal while catering to individual interests.
Role & Team
Leveraging my expertise in analytics, product development, and industry trends, I engaged in SME interviews, analyzed user metrics, and studied competitor solutions to familiarize myself with our users' needs. Leading ideation, sketching, wireframing, and prototyping exercises, we iterated until achieving a final proof of concept.
Result
Inspired by successful SaaS platforms like Salesforce, dynamic products such as Google Hire, and competitors like Bloomberg Terminals, our team developed a viable high-definition prototype and roadmap. This groundbreaking design offers a fresh perspective not only for Mercury but potentially for the entire industry. By demonstrating the user-centered changes and development implications, we gained buy-in from the business, paving the way for a transformative user experience and solidifying our position as industry leaders.
UX Reboot and UI Refresh: Transforming the Mercury Platform
Background
A GIS Security mandate requires Mercury to upgrade its technology platform. The new version offers enhanced capabilities, including content personalization, improved integration, role-based access control, multi-lingual support, and responsive design. Concurrently, new company leadership is emphasizing innovation and digital transformation across the organization, providing an opportunity to review digital strategy, customer-centricity, process optimization, data and analytics, ecosystems and partnerships, as well as Mercury's appearance and functionalities.
Scope
The comprehensive scope of the project entails multiple aspects aimed at optimizing the user experience and functionality of the platform. The proposed UX initiatives include reviewing and implementing information architecture, enhancing search functionality, creating/optimizing metadata description, scrutinizing website copy, reviewing user flow, simplifying the navigation menu, leveraging the Helix Design System (DSN) to implement a light theme, and creating a dark theme.
Challenge
1. Integrating Diverse Information Architecture: Addressing the challenge of consolidating and integrating information architectures from different user personas entitlements from different lines of business to create a coherent and user-friendly structure.
2. Seamless Search Functionality Enhancement: Overcoming data volumes and complexity, real-time updates, latency, precision and recall, natural language processing, security and compliance, scalability, multilingual support, and relevance ranking to ensure smooth integration of enhanced search functionalities without compromising performance or user experience.
3. Optimizing Metadata Descriptions: Devising a strategy to effectively create and optimize metadata descriptions to improve search accuracy and relevance while maintaining consistency across the platform.
4. Ensuring Consistency in Website Copy: Overcoming the challenge of standardizing and maintaining consistent website copy across line of business generated content throughout the platform to maintaining a cohesive tone and voice.
5. Enhancing First-time Login User Flow to Improve Onboarding Experience and Meet Security Requirements: Addressing potential bottlenecks to reduce friction and make it intuitive for users to complete onboarding security requirements.This includes robust password hint and completion checkmark, simplifying agreement page and multi-factor authentication.
6. Streamlining Navigation Menu: Reorganizing and simplifying the navigation menu to provide easy access to essential features and content based on user persona per line of business, while reducing clutter and confusion.
7. Implementing Helix Design System: Ensuring a smooth and successful implementation of the Helix Design System (DSN) while adapting it to suit the platform's unique requirements and design elements. This includes creating new components that align with platform branding while providing optimal readability and user experience.
8. Creating an Attractive Dark Theme: Crafting an aesthetically pleasing user preference and habit informed dark theme that upholds readability and adheres to ADA/WCAG accessibility requirements, considering color contrast and user preferences.
9. Coordinating Multiple UX Initiatives and Operations: Managing multiple UX initiatives simultaneously, ensuring effective collaboration among teams, and adhering to project timelines to deliver a cohesive and improved user experience.
Solution
The solution involved an in-depth user-centric approach, starting with comprehensive user research and analysis. The UX team conducted interviews, usability tests, and user feedback surveys to understand pain points and gather valuable insights. By identifying user preferences and needs, the team developed a clear direction for the platform upgrade.
All components were designed with a focus on simplicity and efficiency. Visual elements were modernized to create a fresh and visually appealing look, while maintaining consistency with the organization's unified brand guidelines. New features and functions were strategically introduced to streamline user workflows and enhance overall productivity.
The launch (September, 2023) will be carried out in two stages: initially, the old system will be integrated with the platform upgrade, ensuring a seamless transition. Concurrently, we will introduce the new design as a beta version, allowing select users to experience and provide feedback on its functionalities and user experience. To support this transition, comprehensive user training and onboarding sessions will be conducted, complemented by extensive documentation and support resources.
Role
Overall my role as VP of UX Delivery Lead involved a blend of leadership, research, design, collaboration, and UX advocacy. My key duties included leading UX research, facilitating usability tests, cross-functional stakeholder collaborations, development team coordination, designing wireframe, prototype, and components, UX strategy development, design quality assurance, and provide continuous improvement through user feedback.
Result
Although the Mercury 2.0 launch is pending, the ongoing user acceptance testing (UAT) has been yielding highly promising outcomes. Throughout the UAT process, stakeholders, including end-users and relevant teams, have actively engaged in evaluating the upgraded platform's functionalities, user interface, and overall user experience.
The UAT participants have expressed positive feedback, praising the enhanced features, improved navigation, and seamless interactions within the new platform. The testing results indicate that users find the Mercury 2.0 interface intuitive, efficient, and conducive to their tasks and objectives.
