Vision
A service to help retired adults reignite their passions, find meaning and use their skills to make a difference.
Team
· Tulsi Desai – Product Manager
· Stella Tu – User Researcher
· Katie Connor – Research Ops
My Role
· UX + UI Design
· UX Research + Strategy
Deliverable
A complete service, including website and other product assets.
Time + Space
· Sept 2019 – Present
· Stanford University
The Challenge
When it’s time to retire, many ambitious people have a hard time retaining their sense of purpose. They felt important at their job, and after leaving they often feel invisible and unsure what to do next.
Our Solution
Act II helps our users have fun, commit to lifelong learning, and find opportunities to have an impact with the skills they've built over a lifetime. We do this by getting to know them through a quiz, serving them experience recommendations, and improving those recommendations over time.
Examples of recommendations we serve our users.
A simplified wireflow of the service.
Process
Needfinding
My teammates and I interviewed 35 adults who were either about to retire or who had recently retired, to get a sense of what their experience was like and how we could help.
We found many people were averse to the traditional concept of retirement. They wanted have fun, keep learning, and make a difference.
“I didn’t know what I was doing after I left work. I was just plowing through.”
— Nick, Private Equity Founder
“Retirement is not a concept I’m all that familiar with. It’s not something I aspire to.”
— Tom, Global Ad Agency Founder
“My goal is to be engaged. I want to be doing something meaningful.”
— Susan, Marketing Entrepreneur
Competitive Analysis
We also explored the existing solutions to the problems they described, and realized that none of them offered the unique blend of solutions that our users were looking for. None seemed quite right for this group of people.
Testing and Iteration
We built lightweight versions of the website and quiz, along with a newsletter to help us build an audience. I designed iteratively, refining each one based on user feedback. Here are a few changes I made using this process.
Landing Page
We tested several landing pages to hone our value proposition. We learned our users were most enthusiastic about having an alternative to "retirement", and that we needed to clearly state what our service offered.
Before
After
Quiz
Our ability to make good recommendations depends on the questions we ask users. We ran repeated user studies to refine the quiz. In this case, I was adjusting to our users' sensitivities around the word "retirement".
“There’s a stigma with the word ‘retired’ so I’m glad you guys threw this callout in here.”
— Susan, Act II member
Newsletter
We started a newsletter as a way to engage with our audience once the Coronavirus Pandemic made it hard for them to do the activities we usually recommend. We learned users wanted content more oriented toward learning and impact. Those changes allowed the newsletter to become a significant lead generator for us.
Launch + Next Steps
We launched a complete service, received 2000+ site visits, acquired 80+ newsletter subscriptions in two weeks, and are currently serving 20 Act II members with customized recommendations.
You can visit our site to sign up, or take our sample quiz for yourself if you'd like. We are continuing to refine the Act II experience, build the brand, and find ways to better serve our customers.
2000+
Site Visits
80+
Newsletter Subscriptions
20
Act II Members
“I enjoyed this experience so much I’m continuing to mentor ten students through the completion of their Masters program. I’m excited to keep working with the Act II team to find meaningful experiences like this.”
— Melissa, Former Adobe CMO
“I was so impressed with your analysis of what I could do with my interests in fashion and helping women re-enter the workplace. I was looking for a non-profit, and Dress for Success turned out to be a perfect fit!”
— Wanda, Healthcare Executive
“If you try to come up with something by sitting around thinking about it, you'll never take action. Act II helped me figure out how to actually do some of these things that I would like to do.”
— Janak, Former CFO