Behavioural information design

It has been shown again and again in behavioural research that out decisions are hugely influenced by the way information is presented to us, its framing. Our choices about how to present portfolio holdings, performance data, risk, or benchmarks will materially affect the customer’s subsequent financial decisions. For example, show clients granular daily returns (as most digital client reporting does) and you make it significantly harder for your clients to make good long-term decisions. Short-term data lead to short-term mind-sets.

Modern technology offers us the potential to intentionally design information to minimise the gap between a good decision and an emotionally comfortable decision. It also offers the opportunity to personalise what each customers sees to be most appropriate for their individual needs. However, technology also removes the excuse for not doing so, and so information design becomes a potential Conduct Risk. If organisations present information to clients in ways known to be misaligned to their objectives, and have the technology to have corrected this, then they have knowingly acted to cause client detriment.

We know a great deal these days about how decisions are affected by framing, though we often still need randomised control experiments to be certain of behavioural responses in complex environments. Nonetheless, here are a few simple rules that every digital interface designer should obey when making choices about how to present financial information.

Always tie design to desired behaviour of the customer

• Always ensure that calls to action link to a clear path to do something beneficial
• Always include obvious links to supporting content

Always default to the big picture view before detailed views

• Always default to longer term views and data rather than short-term
• Only label the prominent and important data at each level

Only show information that serves a purpose

• Always eliminate any extraneous information
• Always default to showing as little as possible
• Always have a rationale for what is on the page, where it is and how it is shown – position, size and colour all convey impressions of importance
• Always avoid spurious precision (e.g. ￡40,000 rather than ￡40,106.95)
• Always clearly denote what information is immediately actionable

Always focus attention on what matters most

• Always ensure that details and language don’t convey certainty where this cannot be justified by the assumptions – it is better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong
• Always consider the meaning of every visual dimension: vertical/horizontal position; size; colour; labelling/font; emphasis, etc. (e.g., if items are positioned vertically, have a reason for the top to bottom ordering)
• Always ensure visualisation illustrates the relative magnitude/importance of all components and their relationship to one another
• Only use lists of data where space requires them (e.g., here!), and then always order by magnitude/importance

Always enable clear like-for-like comparisons on crucial decision dimensions

• Always avoid visual representations that are difficult for people to easily compare
• Always match scales, views and assumptions on all comparable data to aid easy side-by-side comparison
• Always use consistent visual representation for the same information – wherever information appears in the site it should look the same