T. Rowe Price
Japan/APAC Web Experiences Redesign
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
T. Rowe Price was amidst a global overhaul of their web experiences. With operations in over 20 countries, each with distinct market needs and a strong global corporate narrative, the company faced numerous competing initiatives. The APAC region (Japan, China, and Australia) operated independently from T. Rowe's global AEM(Adobe Experience Management) platform, outsourcing their marketing websites to local partners. The global web team was tasked with internalizing these websites. I led a diverse global team consisting of product designers, visual designers, motion designers, prototypers, and researchers from the US, UK, and Japan in the redesign of three Japanese microsites and a larger website for the entire APAC region.
The primary goal was to transition the APAC websites onto the global AEM(Adobe Experience Management) platform, ensuring a consistent experience for customers and reducing costs by 40% through the elimination of reliance on local partners for maintenance and updates.
As part of the project, I:
Led the translation and content strategy of the existing Japanese web properties utilizing a combination of traditional content strategy methods and various AI tools.
Augmented traditional qualitative and quantitative user research with AI tools, leveraging AI (Claude.ai, Javis.ai) for deeper customer/client understanding.
Led updates of Beacon, T. Rowe's comprehensive design system, to cater to the new audience's requirements. This involved leveraging tokens for all elements, including motion, and incorporating animation tools like Lotte.
T. Rowe Price was a very matrixed organization, where regions were not required to be on the global AEM platform. While many were, there were some outliers, like many of the countries, like Japan and Australia. Those who were not on the global platform were not able to use the global design system, as well as were not maintained by global web team. This meant a lot of redundant work with external vendors, and more importantly, with multiple websites created by multiple vendors meant very different user experiences throughout the network. Websites that were not on the global platform had very different layouts, navigation, and no cohesion globally. This made T. Rowe’s brand suffer and a lack of consumer confidence. T. Rowe needed to align all the country websites and bring them into the common global platform. Not just for a common global experience, but for economies of scale and a large reduction of cost in maintenance of more than 40%.
T. Rowe Price undertook a significant global redesign initiative, leveraging the strength of T. Rowe's design system to enhance crucial experiences tailored specifically for the dynamic Japanese market. Throughout this ambitious project, our primary focus was to ensure that the redesigned elements catered to the distinct needs and preferences of Japanese individual investors while aligning the sites and processes with the global web team.
By enhancing and integrating Beacon's comprehensive toolkit, we meticulously developed an intuitive and culturally relevant design aimed at resonating with the discerning Japanese audience, despite the design team's limited experience with the Japanese language and culture. I stood out as one of the few team members familiar with Japanese culture and design sensibilities. Although not fluent in Japanese, I effectively collaborated and coordinated with Japanese market leaders.
This transformative partnership between T. Rowe Price’s web team and the Japanese market leaders showcases our dedication to excellence and adaptability that forms the foundation of our design approach.
Project timeline constraints prevented us from conducting proper user research study. However, we conducted extensive competitive analysis with T. Rowe's competitors such as Mizuho in Japan and ANZ in Australia, as well as a handful of user interviews of key client profiles. My experience working with both companies at Avanade and Salesforce also provided valuable insights.
Throughout the project, I collaborated closely with the Japanese product manager to develop a comprehensive guide for conducting user research in the Japanese market. This research encompassed both institutional and individual investors, post-design evaluation with sophisticated prototypes, incorporating motion and visual elements.
Our design process followed a pretty standard Design Thinking methodology, involving ideation sessions with both our internal design team and various stakeholders, including product managers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and executives. We began by creating wireframe concepts and conducting a content analysis exercise to translate Japanese content, align it with the global marketing objectives, and then retranslate it back into Japanese. This was an engaging process as we did not have Japanese speakers on the design team, so we utilized tools like Google Translate and AI, with validation from Japanese SMEs to ensure accuracy.