The product team gathered numbers that revealed a clear operational problem. On average, 6 to 8 hours daily were consumed with manual review and processing of customer enrollment requests. On the other hand, major competitors offered the entire DRIP enrollment process in a 100% digital experience.

​

All we had collected until then were evidences of an internal problem, but there was a gap to understand: the customers' point of view. On Reddit, while searching for customer comments, I noticed that the experience was described as "archaic," leading people to abandon enrolling new assets.

​

These reports became research hypotheses. I recruited 20 users who invested through Questrade and also through competing brokerages. The goal was to hear from those who had experienced the difference between manual vs digital experiences.

​

In the research, I tested people's understanding of a 100% digital enrollment flow and where the functionality should reside in the platform's navigation. The result showed that instead of simply digitizing a form, there was an opportunity to design something that had never existed: transparency in the enrollment process, visibility of statuses, and continuous management within the platform.

To understand what caused the 2 days of waiting, I extended the blueprint inside Questrade and documented the 11 steps and the 3 teams involved in approving each request. The mapping revealed that the delay was not in the analysis itself, but in the queue of requests and the manual rework that involved maintaining and updating multiple spreadsheets.

​

So, instead of designing screens over the legacy system, I concluded, along with the engineering team, that the requirements for the new API should stem from the experience we wanted to deliver. The concept envisioned that the user could see and manage their enrollment at any time, which required something that did not yet exist: a single source of truth that recorded the enrollment status of each asset, per user.

​

The new API was born with this requirement and it was what unlocked continuous management and automatic enrollment of new assets.

The research revealed an opportunity that RBC, Wealthsimple, and Robinhood did not cover: users wanted to control which assets entered the DRIP. The problem was that the system required the initial enrollment to cover all assets in the account.

​

Before treating this as a blockage, I looked at the behavior data: 84% of the base already enrolled all assets. In other words, what seemed like a technical limitation was, in practice, the default for most. The question became how to also cater to those who wanted customization.

​

The solution was to work on the sequence of the flow. The user accepts the terms covering the entire account and then arrives at the management screen, where they can uncheck the assets they do not want to keep. New assets purchased afterward enter automatically if the user maintains this setting.

​

In the end, this flow became the meeting point of the entire project construction: the customization that the research revealed as a differentiator, the continuous management that the new API made possible, and a default aligned with the actual behavior of the base. An enrollment that previously took 2 business days and crossed 3 teams was completed in 8 seconds by the user themselves.

The product team gathered numbers that revealed a clear operational problem. On average, 6 to 8 hours daily were consumed with manual review and processing of customer enrollment requests. On the other hand, major competitors offered the entire DRIP enrollment process in a 100% digital experience.

​

All we had collected until then were evidences of an internal problem, but there was a gap to understand: the customers' point of view. On Reddit, while searching for customer comments, I noticed that the experience was described as "archaic," leading people to abandon enrolling new assets.

​

These reports became research hypotheses. I recruited 20 users who invested through Questrade and also through competing brokerages. The goal was to hear from those who had experienced the difference between manual vs digital experiences.

​

In the research, I tested people's understanding of a 100% digital enrollment flow and where the functionality should reside in the platform's navigation. The result showed that instead of simply digitizing a form, there was an opportunity to design something that had never existed: transparency in the enrollment process, visibility of statuses, and continuous management within the platform.

To understand what caused the 2 days of waiting, I extended the blueprint inside Questrade and documented the 11 steps and the 3 teams involved in approving each request. The mapping revealed that the delay was not in the analysis itself, but in the queue of requests and the manual rework that involved maintaining and updating multiple spreadsheets.

​

So, instead of designing screens over the legacy system, I concluded, along with the engineering team, that the requirements for the new API should stem from the experience we wanted to deliver. The concept envisioned that the user could see and manage their enrollment at any time, which required something that did not yet exist: a single source of truth that recorded the enrollment status of each asset, per user.

​

The new API was born with this requirement and it was what unlocked continuous management and automatic enrollment of new assets.

The research revealed an opportunity that RBC, Wealthsimple, and Robinhood did not cover: users wanted to control which assets entered the DRIP. The problem was that the system required the initial enrollment to cover all assets in the account.

​

Before treating this as a blockage, I looked at the behavior data: 84% of the base already enrolled all assets. In other words, what seemed like a technical limitation was, in practice, the default for most. The question became how to also cater to those who wanted customization.

​

The solution was to work on the sequence of the flow. The user accepts the terms covering the entire account and then arrives at the management screen, where they can uncheck the assets they do not want to keep. New assets purchased afterward enter automatically if the user maintains this setting.

​

In the end, this flow became the meeting point of the entire project construction: the customization that the research revealed as a differentiator, the continuous management that the new API made possible, and a default aligned with the actual behavior of the base. An enrollment that previously took 2 business days and crossed 3 teams was completed in 8 seconds by the user themselves.