Cetera’s Adviceworks®

From practical portal 
to powerful platform

Our North Star vision and phased approach helps put financial professionals squarely in control.

  • In-Depth Interviews

    Climb inside the world of the user with structured interviews that bring their unique voices into the design process.

  • Personas

    Bringing your target users to life with personas that are rooted in research and crafted with strategic data and insights creates a clear voice to model.

  • Journey Maps

    The path of an experience is seldom a straight one, especially when looking to improve your user experience. Mapping that journey is a powerful way to begin.

  • Competitive Analysis

    See where you shine, where you don’t, and how to leverage that intel to fill the most important gaps in your experience.

  • Taxonomy Research

    Avoid internal bias with quantitative research methods that let users create the most intuitive navigation groupings for their needs.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals and best practices to find that “special sauce” that drives an actionable roadmap for your future experience.

  • Sketches

    When it comes to bringing ideas to life, the pencil is mightier than the keyboard. And much faster.

  • Prototypes

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Bringing the user experience to life with a fully-interactive artifact is a low-cost, high-value way to iterate without the investment of code.

  • Responsive Design

    We design for the future on today’s devices. Every element is considered for every size display to create an ideal experience for all users.

  • Visual Design

    Through imagery, messaging, color and typography, we deliberate over pixels, consistency, readability, contrast, accessibility and creativity.

  • User Testing

    To get decisive, actionable findings, we let users explore without artificial restrictions. We design our prototypes to accommodate this need, as a final product would.

  • Functional Specifications

    Converting your designs into well-documented specifications with functionality, flows, layout, and styles ensures that no developer has to guess what comes next.

  • Design Systems

    Good design will translate to a good design system — and vice versa. Build your brand with well-defined styles and components at the heart, and it will grow and breathe well.

The Challenge

Fintech is an incredibly dynamic space. Financial professionals depend on a multitude of technology solutions to drive their business. From market research to client proposals, opening accounts to executing trades, business marketing and growth to client portals and back-office support, Cetera’s AdviceWorks® brings 30+ applications together to help financial professionals run their day-to-day business while servicing their clients’ long-term financial needs.

Cetera’s vision was to create a more user-centric experience by seamlessly integrating the diverse components of AdviceWorks. This included applying client data and goals seamlessly through forms; understanding client status to prioritize workstreams; uncovering opportunities to grow as a financial professional; and finding new insights on the market and their business. With a variety of diverse technologies in place, Cetera needed help navigating the process, determining priorities, and identifying where to start.

North Star Vision
North Star Vision

The Approach

After dozens of foundational interviews with internal stakeholders and clients, ZeroDegrees joined the Cetera team, who flew in from all over the country for a week-long series of design-thinking exercises to solicit their best ideas. We served as both facilitators and contributors, helping to bring the group’s ideas to life in a new North Star concept. 

The vision was to take AdviceWorks from being a launching pad to a cockpit—a place that leverages the data from all the other apps to deliver insights that help financial professionals do their jobs better. It would help get work done faster and simplify the steps in the workflow. At the same time, it would be a hub for content, insights on the market, and ideas on how to achieve business growth. In short, it’s a place that rewards users for the time they spend there.

New Design System, New Designs
New Design System, New Designs

We wireframed the North Star vision. We ran concept testing and taxonomy exercises. We developed an entirely new visual design system. Then, we worked with Cetera to build a phased approach that would achieve that vision in an executable way—one that would enhance what they have now while working incrementally toward that shining North Star. From reskinning the old app to making nav changes and adding key features, prioritizing what got built first to offer the most differentiation now, and figuring out a roadmap for what came next.

Collage of MVP screens
Collage of MVP screens

The Results

Over the course of two years, Cetera and ZeroDegrees have made thoughtful, step-change improvements to the AdviceWorks platform, prioritizing user experience and ease of use while enhancing functionality—and creating real-world value for the financial professionals. We’ve even been invited back to lead four more workshops with their teams in Los Angeles, San Diego and Dallas.

Just wanted to express my appreciation for the stellar work and partnership we have with you.

Unlike other agencies, one of the key distinctions, and much appreciated aspect you bring is your ability to challenge and push back on our ideas/thoughts and elevate the solution by injecting your expertise into the strategy, and ultimately the design. This is more valuable than can be expressed.

Benjamin Easaw Managing Director, Digital Experience Design