A dynamic, data-led tool to boost career clarity and talent attraction

The project started with a 3-hour vision discovery workshop, bringing together the AFP, the infogr8 team, and our workforce analytics partners Lightcast. This was run alongside our usual data/tech discovery phase.

“With a wide-ranging and diverse user base, our core strategic challenge was to define and prioritise the audiences in a way that would guide product development to have the biggest, most meaningful impact in the real world. Some collaborative and open-minded workshop sessions with the client team were key in achieving this, where we were all happy to positively challenge each other’s thinking.

Alongside this, we needed to integrate the AFP brand and proposition in ways that complemented, rather than disrupted, the UX.”

– Liz Hatherley, Strategy Lead

One of the outputs of the discovery workshop was pinning down three layers of purpose that the AFP wanted our tool to achieve.

For the wider US public

– To inform and empower financial professionals to achieve their career potential as roles and working practices in the profession evolve

For the AFP as an organisation

– To bring more people into the AFP community

– To own the career development space for modern-day finance professionals

– To openly embrace the changing nature of careers in finance

For the AFP’s members

– To tap into empirical, trusted data and practical insights on the subject

– To feel more empowered to make solid career decisions

– To fulfil their career potential and play an increasingly business-critical role

– To feel part of a community of fellow users of the tool

Throughout the process, we helped align the key stakeholders, bringing the team together. As a result, we designed and developed a custom solution to the AFP’s brief in less than 3 months. To do so in-house would have required a timeline of 12 months minimum.

“As a team, I recall many conversations with the client about how to classify and display the different occupations and roles in a way that the career pathway was meaningful but not too confusing to look at. Focusing on my area, the client wanted to limit the content the users could consume before entering their email addresses. It’s not rocket science but I hadn’t done that before, so I had to try different approaches to implement it.”

– Sergio Galan, Data Viz Engineer

A truly collaborative approach = a realistic, responsive career empowerment tool

Harnessing Lightcast’s rich source of US finance labour market data and the AFP’s own member survey data on salaries, we co-developed a visually engaging and interactive insights tool that presents a detailed career view for new and existing financial professionals to progress through.

An important aspect of the tool was to show realistic entry-points to a profession often shrouded in mystery or false preconceptions. In response, our tool highlights supply and demand at both the state and metropolitan levels. It also provides a pathways function, showing users how they can progress in their careers one step at a time, supported by AFP training and certification.

We also created an optimised UI to guide the user through the various career functions available, backed up by real-life case studies to make the whole experience more human.

At each stage of the project, we iterated and adapted sketch concepts through to high-fidelity designs and clickable prototypes to bring the AFP on the journey with us.

“Each design decision was taken with care and attention – for all the ‘yes’, there were many more no’s. This allowed us to present a more fully-rounded view of the new face of the finance industry stateside.”

– Jake Madsen, Producer

“Overall, the viz is a solid piece of interactive data visualisation, and the animated sizzle reel helps a great deal to capture users’ first impressions.”

– Piero Zagami, Information Design Lead

“As the coder, I’m proud of the smooth user experience. It’s a web platform with many charts, animations, and a large amount of data, but it loads quickly with fast changes between the page components.”

– Sergio Galan, Data Viz Engineer

“With a variety of familiar but sophisticated visualisations, the finished product has a sleek and succinct tone that our varied user groups can all benefit from almost as soon as they land on it, whether they’re a entry-level or seasoned professional. For me, providing all users with this accessible and democratised – yet data-packed – experience is the project’s biggest achievement.”

– Liz Hatherley, Strategy Lead