a projection of an interconnected digital ecosystem for Northwestern Mutual, illustrating a future state platform experience through the lens of our users; the field, our customers, and the home office.

Our enterprise experience design team led the effort to create a vision of “A Single, Interconnected Platform” for Northwestern Mutual. Our team focused on creating a narrative to helping the organization realize how the single, interconnected platform coupled with a digital strategy and architecture will impact the business and the customer experience.

The work was grounded in research with financial planners, wealth management advisors, salespeople, senior leadership, directors, servicing agents, and leadership representatives spanning core business pillars.

NM Connect, a platform we inherited, was built in the late 2000’s and had no overall governance, no cohesive structure, and no design system. It was, however, the most modern platform in the company, and it was decided that we would focus on making it the single platform for all business users. The experience would have to span end-to-end financial planning, insurance sales, servicing, wealth management and investing, client management, business growth and management, training, and corporate communications

MY ROLE

Design Strategy, Service Design, Product Design, Research

THE TEAM

Will Gabrenya (Design Lead), Liz DeLuca (Research), Laura Mulcahey (SPM)

We ran multiple workshops works with design leadership to gain understanding and awareness of objectives that span product groups. Also to highlight various strategic objectives that sit outside of the direct product group. It was crucial the work tied back to overarching company objectives. Some previous thinking existed in terms of a future state. We used the workshop to review this work, understand what worked, didn't work, and what should be considered moving forward. The insights and feedback were then used to anchor the scenario and storyboard development in the second workshop.

The second workshop saw us pivot to the opportunity space - I designed co-creation activities for the virtual session which enabled us to understand what the critical opportunities and scenarios are we should take into consideration. These are scenarios the team identify as high impact, delivering customer and business value

Above, we began mapping out the customer lifecycle for client, advisor, and home office staff. We focused on key experience moments and interactions across the journey. The story arc had to be realized in different ways for different pillars of the organization, so we wanted to highlight experience transition across individuals, team, groups and digital products all through a single platform. this helped teams understand how respective areas would be impacted and how the platform can and should enable users across siloes.

These blueprints were some of many, connecting dozens of product teams, few of whom were communicating. These jumpstarted a digital strategy to align insurance products and their digital transition.

Below, the narrative was the foundation for storyboarding which provided insight into journey moments, a description of the experience, the design implications (UI), and platform features. This was effectively the story arc used for various outputs depending on the audience. We collaborated with around 15 designers from different parts of the organization to design screens to include our story. We collaborated and co-created with multiple enterprise stakeholders and partners in break-out sessions, ranging from client Advocacy, Data Strategy, Enterprise architecture, Field Experience, Customer experience and more.

I wanted to ensure the vision focused on the customer and inspired ordinary people to people to create extraordinary products.

We conducted secondary research with our research team and corporate strategy teams, leveraging whatever existing quant and qual data we could. Wherever we had the data and evidence to support the narrative, we included it. Scenarios, experiences, interactions, products, or features articulated in the story were primarily evidence-based and grounded in insight.

Our vision focused on pathways for key roles. Here, for example, is some examples from the advisor path, from the moment they enter the organization, to familiarizing with the tools of the business, learning modules and connecting with mentors.

Because of the flexibility of Learning on the platform, the advisor can get started right away with course content. She easily tracks her progress of the completed curriculum, as well as upcoming training events. 

Learning was more than just supporting new recruits. Accomplished staff wanted a way to give back. Here, we designed a community platform. Once used to upskill and learn from advisor leaders, Britt has the opportunity to give back to newer advisors, this time as a contributor.

After another successful fiscal year, Britt reviews her accomplishments and how far she's come thanks to the yearly snapshot. It not only highlights how far she has come, but also provides the extra motivation to continue her trajectory towards leadership.