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

    Through deep-dive interviews we bring users’ unique voices directly into the design process, surfacing the real behaviors and the motivations behind their actions.

  • Personas

    We bring your target users to life with personas rooted in research and built on real data, so every downstream decision has a clear, consistent voice to model against.

  • Journey Maps

    The path of an experience is seldom a straight one. We map it stage by stage, capturing what users do, think, and feel along the way, to surface pain points and opportunities hiding in plain sight.

  • Competitive Analysis

    We study your competitors and the best practices beyond your category to establish the baseline users expect, and to find the openings that let you differentiate.

  • Taxonomy

    Using a mix of open and closed card sorting, tree testing, and first-click studies, we build an information architecture people can navigate with confidence.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals, and best practices to find what makes your experience worth having. Then we turn it into an action plan for what comes next.

  • Sketches

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

  • Prototyping

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Testing with one gets us past hypothetical reactions and into real behavior, the kind of feedback we can actually trust. With AI-assisted prototypes, we go even deeper, real data, real interactions, insight we couldn’t get any other way.

  • Responsive Design

    We design every feature and flow for every screen it could appear on. The real test isn’t the device, it’s whether every decision still makes sense no matter how someone’s viewing it.

  • Visual Design

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

  • Usability Testing

    We ride-along as users navigate digital experiences while trying to achieve their goals. Sometimes we ask probing questions. Sometimes we just observe. Unearthing friction early costs a conversation. Catching it later could cost the business.

  • Design Handoff

    Final screens, specifications, documentation, and content assets—organized in Figma and AI-ready Markdown so both your developers and their coding tools can move seamlessly from design to build.

  • Design Systems

    A design system is what makes consistency survive growth: a shared language everyone builds from, not a set of rules only one person remembers. We deliver it in Figma and Markdown, built to evolve as your product does.

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 unifying the core 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