Case Study:
NSW Trustee & Guardian
Agency: Folk
Role: Research, Design, Validation
Timeline: 10 weeks
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FOLK / 2020
BRIEF
deliver a new NSW Trustee & Guardian customer facing website to
Meet the needs of all customers (commercial/involuntary)
Support business growth
Support the strategic objectives of the organisation
Proactively build and protect the NSW Trustee & Guardian brand reputation.
BACKGROUND
The NSW Trustee & Guardian is a unique government agency as it:
Provides commercial services with revenue generated from fees charged to customers and interest received on investments, (Wills, Powers of Attorney, and Enduring Guardian Appointments, long-term storage of planning ahead documents, financial management, executor and administrator of deceased estates)

Provides support and guidance for involuntary customers (beneficiaries, private guardians and managers, persons under guardianship or financial management orders, and service providers and carers).
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DISCOVERY
As part of our discovery phase, we conducted:
25 x 1 hour interviews with external participants2
1 x 1 hour internal stakeholder interviews
Competitor analysis
Google and search analytics
Desktop research

This research formed the basis of our hypotheses to take into the website redesign. 
Research Insight — High awareness, low conversion
An important user insight that arose from our external participant interviews was that NSW Trustee & Guardian was on the radar for people searching for a will, however there was not enough confidence to convert once they landed on the website, as there were several key needs that were not being met. With the NSW Trustee & Guardian wanting to reach a younger demographic for their commercial products services, lack of flexibility was high on the list for this audience profile.
Key Need— Flexibility
Young professionals did not feel like NSW Trustee & Guardian considered their circumstances or needs when it came to booking an appointment. This was due to the lack of flexibility around appointment times, long wait times and limited booking functionality. 
In order to book an appointment, users were taken to a separate URL and required to fill in a page length form. Once submitted, the user discovered that the form they submitted was actually a request for an appointment rather than an appointment booking form. This meant that the user would receive a call back after the form submission, with no guarantee of a booked-in appointment. In this call, they would discover that there were no appointments after work hours or on weekends, and long wait times for an appointment -  in some cases up to three months in advance. This caused frustration, and increased the barrier to conversion, as there was little customers could do to progress forward. Often at this point, users would give up booking an appointment and look elsewhere. 
Designing for Key Needs—
From our research insights, we developed customer profiles and hypotheses for each customer profile, which we shared and discussed with the design team. Having our detailed insights highlighted through our customer profiles helped the design team understand the key needs, motivations, pain points and goals for our customers. 
For our commercial customer profile, our hypothesis was that to meet this key need,  improving access to customer service and introducing flexible appointments would increase the path to conversion.
Our goal was to focus on the booking appointment flow, as this was the primary call to action for conversion. This required us to design a solution that was simple, streamlined and ultimately easy for the end user to do. We created a jobs to be done list and sketched out various solutions of how we could bring this to life, taking inspiration from direct competitors to help start us with our design solution. The next step involved refining the sketches into wireframes.
Helping Clients Understand its Importance—
We presented a discovery showcase deck of our findings to the client, with detailed insights supported by direct quotes from the participants, alongside our customer profiles and hypotheses for how the website could support the needs of these customers. 
Whilst the client had engaged in previous research and uncovered insights not dissimilar to what we had presented back, the detailed quotes were powerful reminders of where the biggest pain points and needs were experienced by users across the organisation. This anecdotal evidence helped to validate discussions internally around key focus areas of the website, whilst supporting areas of the organisation from a service level that would increase the path to conversion.
DELIVERABLES

phase 1
Discovery & Analysis

DISCOVERY & REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
 

ANALYSE EXISTING analytics & CRM DATA, JOURNEYS AND PERSONAS
 COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
RESEARCH REPORT & PRESENTATION
FORMULATE RESEARCH PLAN


phase 2
User Testing & Analysis

‍USER TESTING & ANALYSIS

USABILITY TEST SESSIONS WITH 12 PARTICIPANTS
FRANCHISEE INTERVIEWS
CREATE RESEARCH-INFORMED PERSONAS
USER JOURNEYS 
SITE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE MAP 
SERVICE DESIGN BLUEPRINT 




phase 3
design & prototype



BUILD CLICKABLE PROTOTYPES (DESKTOP/MOBILE)
SESSION TESTS WITH 12 PARTICIPANTS
ITERATE ON DESIGN AND DELIVER





LEARNINGS
Even after using the website, there was still some confusion about why Mortgage Choice was different or what it offered in terms of unique value proposition. Once we made this clear, all participants said it was important to know.
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After having used Mortgage Choice website, people saw the website as a stepping stone to deeper research. They came here to gather information or get an initial ballpark in order to call a bank direct or continue researching on other sites. Although users understood that they provided other products, essentially they saw Mortgage Choice as a comparison site.

There was also confusion on the broker’s sites as to whether the information was coming from a Mortgage Choice or broker point of view. Even when people have a broker, they will do their research regardless. On broker’s pages they are likely to look for a point of connection with a broker, and sometimes this is as simple as seeing that their address is close to home.