Case 17 / 17
The AdviceCompany
A platform that started with the customer, not the technology.
- Sector
- Fintech · Advisory
- Year
- 2022
- Scope
- Discovery · Strategy · App
Investors going self-directed are not rejecting advice. They are rejecting the price and the appointment. The Advice Company thought AI could carry most of the guidance, with real people kept for the parts that need them. First it had to find out whether anyone wanted that.
The answer was a guess
The team had a strong hypothesis and no evidence. That is the most expensive place to start designing from, because every screen you draw commits you to an assumption nobody has tested.
Nothing could be designed until they knew the customer better than that.
Workshops before wireframes
So design waited and discovery went first. Working through it with the team turned assumptions about customers into things they could say plainly, disagree about, and check.
Ideas came out of those sessions and went into the market to be tested. Only then did any of it become an app, designed through to a prototype investors could be shown.
Gev brought design thinking to our team and was incredibly effective, leading us through a series of workshops that helped us solidify our understanding.
Nikki Bhatia, Chief of Staff, XanaduOut of the room, into the market
The platform reached an investor-ready prototype with its assumptions already tested in the market rather than defended in a deck. The team came out able to describe its own customer without hedging.
