Building a Gen-AI Assistant

Building a
Gen-AI Assistant

User Base

51k

App Rating

4.5 What is Magnifi AI Assistant?

Assistant is an AI Chatbot designed to help people invest. With assistant, people can do faster, better research, get help making decisions, plan for a goal, manage their portfolio, and learn while they invest. Magnifi helps them find and buy investments from a marketplace of over 15,000 stocks and funds. And assistant can even analyse their existing investments that they hold at other brokerages. We think of assistant like a co-pilot for people investing — like Siri or Alexa went to investment school.

My Role

For the past 2.5 years, I have been leading the design efforts for our AI Assistant. In this role, I have overseen the design and launch of 10 significant features that had a positive impact on the conversion rate for the platform. I have also spearheaded the creation of a scalable design system for the AI Assistant, ensuring design consistency across both desktop web and mobile app experiences.

Feb 2022 - June 2024

The opportunity

In line with our product vision of democratizing personal investing, the goal was to create a personal financial assistant that truly understands users' goals and motivations. We aimed to develop a platform that tailors investment plans specific to each user, taking into account their unique circumstances.

Furthermore, we strived to provide personalised recommendations and insights based on their individual goals and current portfolio, offering diverse strategies to optimise their investments

Gathering user feedback through a focused beta

Magnifi's initial beta launch prioritized a core objective: understanding how early users interact with the platform; with the focus being on function and not form.

To achieve this, we offered a limited feature set, concentrating on:

Magnifi's initial beta launch prioritized a core objective: understanding how early users interact with the platform. To achieve this, we offered a limited feature set, concentrating on:

Personalized Market Insights: We provided users with tailored insights on market events, gauging their usage and value perception.
Basic Conversational Interface: A foundational question-and-answer window allowed users to interact with the platform and ask questions.

This minimalist approach focused on gathering valuable user feedback. By analyzing early user interactions, we could identify:

Areas of greatest user engagement.

Features providing the most value.

This data-driven approach allowed us to strategically scale Magnifi, prioritizing development in areas that resonated most with our user base.

This is how the beta experience was built -

This minimalist approach focused on gathering valuable user feedback. By analyzing early user interactions, we could identify:

Areas of greatest user engagement.
Features providing the most value.

This data-driven approach allowed us to strategically scale Magnifi, prioritizing development in areas that resonated most with our user base.

Magnifi's initial beta launch prioritized a core objective: understanding how early users interact with the platform. To achieve this, we offered a limited feature set, concentrating on:

Personalized Market Insights: We provided users with tailored insights on market events, gauging their usage and value perception.
Basic Conversational Interface: A foundational question-and-answer window allowed users to interact with the platform and ask questions.

This minimalist approach focused on gathering valuable user feedback. By analyzing early user interactions, we could identify:

Areas of greatest user engagement.

Features providing the most value.

This data-driven approach allowed us to strategically scale Magnifi, prioritizing development in areas that resonated most with our user base.

This is how the beta experience was built -

User base

Our primary audience believes investing is their path to financial freedom. They’re level-headed, not gamblers. They envision the power of the markets and responsible strategies (with a little guidance) will empower their futures.

Notably, approximately 74% of our users are mobile-first, accessing our app via their phones, reflecting the contemporary trend towards convenient and accessible investment platforms.

Personas

To understand our user base better, we conducted a comprehensive research exercise. This analysis helped us identify distinct user segments and categorize them into unique personas. At a high level, these were the most prominent types of users -

User needs and journey

Understanding our users is paramount. To achieve this, we identified distinct user personas, representing the different types of investors who utilize Magnifi. We didn't stop there. We took a deep dive into each persona, meticulously mapping out their ideal investment journey.

This process involved pinpointing their most critical needs – the aspects of Magnifi that would deliver the most value to them.

Evolving to meet user needs

Our commitment to user-centricity drove a critical decision. Through remote user research and analysis of platform usage, we identified a need to significantly enhance Magnifi's scalability and support a wider range of user experiences (user flows).

To achieve this goal, we embarked on a strategic redesign. This involved carefully deconstructing the existing user experience and rebuilding it from the ground up. Throughout this process, we ensured the new Magnifi prioritized the following:

Fullfilling evolving user needs:
The redesigned platform directly addresses the revised user needs identified through research.

Scalability for future growth:
The new architecture ensures Magnifi can seamlessly accommodate a growing user base and future feature additions.

Supporting diverse user journeys:
The redesigned user flows cater to a wider range of user types and investment goals.

A cohesive user experience from the re-start

Building Magnifi from the ground up presented a unique opportunity. We weren't just crafting a platform; we were laying the foundation for a holistic user experience. This included the development of a comprehensive design system, built to scale alongside the product itself.

The design system ensured:

Visual Consistency: A unified design language across the app and website, guaranteeing a seamless user experience.
Scalability for Growth: The design system is flexible and adaptable, allowing for future expansion without compromising visual coherence.
Custom Design Elements: This includes the creation of unique iconography and illustrations specifically tailored for the insights section, enhancing user engagement and clarity.

Visual consistency:
A unified design language across the app and website, guaranteeing a seamless user experience.

Scalability for growth:
The design system is flexible and adaptable, allowing for future expansion without compromising visual coherence.

Custom design elements:
This includes the creation of unique iconography and illustrations specifically tailored for the insights section, enhancing user engagement and clarity.

Enhancing the data visualisation

Data serves as the driving force behind our core product, empowering users with engaging experiences, intelligent feedback, and valuable insights into their portfolios and performance. The key lies in effective data visualization, ensuring that users can easily comprehend and interpret the information presented to them.

Recognizing the need for improvement, we undertook an essential upgrade from our previous graphics approach, which solely focused on visually representing graphs and charts better. The goal was to create a more intuitive and digestible experience for our users.

Portfolio Price Chart Simulation

Sector Performance Chart

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