Human Interest
Fast Track 401(k) removes the toil of setting up a business's first 401(k) because onboarding should never get in the way of financial freedom.
Design Lead: Research, end to end design execution (concepting, prototyping, detailed design), usability evaluation, and design systems
900% increase in referral plan signups
Human Interest stays a preferred 401(k) partner to top SMB payroll provider
An overly difficult onboarding process put Human Interest on the brink of losing huge margins.
After getting customer complaints about the Human Interest onboarding, a top SMB payroll provider responsible for referring these customers asked us to fix the process.
Human Interest responded with a commitment to offer a better self-serve experience within six months, the timeline given to us by our partner payroll provider.
This initiative was dubbed Fast Track 401(k), and became the company's highest priority for the year, tapping into Growth, Sales, Integrations, Product, and Legal. I was involved with all aspects of research, carrying designs from concept to detailed, and scaling the design system.
To meet the deadline, we focused on making self-serve happen only for the most common plan types: single-employer startups referred by this partner payroll provider.
I whiteboarded with the Chief Experience Officer and Product and landed on a "just click next" concept to offer curated plans without the choice paralysis.
Sketches showing the pathways of admin decisions.
Almost everything about a 401(k) plan can be customized, but research insights suggested that companies lean toward a few popular configurations. In our proposal, we'd ask admins to make explicit decisions on only a few things, while deferring nonessential tasks to a later time. All the admin has to do is confirm some of the defaulted selections.
Prospects are screened and routed to the right level of support.
To determine if Fast Track is a fit for admins, we introduced a few qualifier questions at the beginning. Plans deemed too complex would be redirected to an onboarding specialist.
We sprinkled in social proof and in-app education to help admins feel more confident in their decisions.
Admins are interested in plans that are common amongst their industry peers, so we showed just the right amount of information at the right time.
This new concept radically simplified 401(k) onboarding.
Instead of asking admins to finetune every option, we now only ask admins enough questions to get them started. We relied on the integration with our payroll partner to pull in data that had already been entered during our partner's onboarding.
These ideas were tested with six admin recruits to see if they can complete all steps of onboarding.
Were terms and concepts easy to understand?
Where might admins get stuck in the flow?
Would admins feel ready to sign their plan docs?
We iterated frequently so that we can spot risks sooner.
While users thought that the flow was simple, there were a few threats to our start-to-complete rate.
Safe Harbor was a mystery. Some thought it was a company, others thought it was a Human Interest-coined feature. Participants said they'd Google it, opening a chance for dropoff.
Language in our flow suggested that there were different tiers of service, but users had trouble finding them. Admins felt that the premium package was forced on them.
Designs were reworked to stop headlining with Safe Harbor and in response, people were much more forgiving when it was subtly introduced in body text.
The trustee and the authorized signer are not always the same people. New designs accounted for this use case, in which we'd show a pending signature status.
I added new components to our design system and even created mascots to add a bit of personality to the flow.
The design system at the time catered to the participant experience which boasted large elements, but didn't consider complex and data-heavy workflows. Furthermore, these "components" didn't use variants; states can only be changed by toggling the visibility of their layers. I recreated the components to be flexible across all of our product lines and made sure they'd be easy to use by other designers.
Several new components and a few ice cream friends I created for the product.
Final product with the new design system facelift.
In the first week of Fast Track's public release, we saw an increase of 900% signups.
Fast Track was first released in beta to customers connected to our partner payroll provider and then to everyone else in September 2023. Human Interest achieved preferred partner status and hit a recordbreaking amount of signups, validating that there is a market of savvy but busy admins who prefer self-serve. Fast Track was so successful that in the coming years, Human Interest started building a whole team to support and evolve this new business line. Read more about the product release here.