In this blog, our CPO Dana Ritter reveals the creative strategies Unique AI uses to keep the user at the center of product design in a world where those users are almost invisible. See more product-related content from Dana on his blog.
Building a great product starts with understanding your user. At Google, where I used to work, that was a core part of the culture. We had mountains of data and a user base in the billions. We could A/B test a button color and get statistically significant results in a matter of hours.
But in the world of financial services, especially in wealth management, the game is completely different. We build software for relationship managers and bankers, but they're often hidden behind multiple layers of compliance and security. Getting direct access to them for user research in the early days feels like a quest for the Holy Grail.
So how do you go about finding your users in finance? how do you build an amazing, user-centric AI product for a market where your users are virtually invisible? At my new role as CPO for Unique AI, we've had to get creative. We're on a mission to bring a little of that "Googley" user-centric magic to the financial sector, and here's how we're doing it.
A Relentless Focus on the User
First, a mindset shift. In my experience, banks are often focused on process and technology stacks. As product builders, our north star is the user. We've hired a team of incredible UX designers and researchers who are obsessed with the end user's workflow, pain points, and desires. We can't let the lack of direct access derail this focus; we simply have to find new ways to connect.
We've developed a multi-pronged approach to unearth the signals we need to build great products. It’s not about finding one perfect solution, but about using a combination of methods to triangulate our way to product-market fit.
Method 1: The Proxy User
When you can't get to your target users, find a proxy. We use services like https://www.userinterviews.com/ to find qualified professionals who fit our user profile – university-educated financial services professionals, for instance. This allows us to conduct structured user research, test our designs, and get initial feedback. It's not a perfect substitute – the US market, for example, has more independent financial advisors and broker-dealers than the relationship managers found in Europe – but it provides a crucial starting point.
Method 2: The Scrappy Approach
Sometimes, you just have to be scrappy. I'm not afraid to ask friends and family who work in wealth management to take a look at our software. While this isn't a systematic approach, it's opportunistic and can yield incredibly valuable, unvarnished feedback. It's a tool, not the whole toolbox, but it's a tool we absolutely use.
Method 3: The Advisory Board
We've established an advisory board composed of representatives from our client banks. We share our latest vision, designs, and product roadmap with them. We even make it a little "Googley" by using a Monopoly-style game where they can allocate fake money to the features they believe are most valuable. This provides high-level validation, but with a major caveat: we rarely get the actual end users. We're typically speaking to mid-office managers, not the relationship managers themselves. Their perspective is valuable for understanding process and business needs, but it's not the same as hearing from the person who will use the product every day.
Method 4: The Public Beta
This is the most exploratory and exciting method we're considering, and it's something I'd love to get your thoughts on. What if we put a slice of our functionality – a beta version – out into the public?
It wouldn’t be the full enterprise experience, as that requires connecting to a bank's internal, sensitive documents. But we could build a community around a publicly available feature, allowing relationship managers to use it in an unofficial, supplemental capacity. This could provide not only qualitative feedback but also the quantitative data and usage metrics we need.