Welcome to the Future of 401(k) Management
Developing and launching the Guideline mobile app to give employees more control of their investment.
Project Overview
PRPL joined forces with Instrument as the Technical Lead and Development Partner, to give retirement investment company, Guideline, a new mobile app to let employees access and manage their 401(k) accounts from anywhere.
Work
PRPL & Instrument: A Powerful Agency Partnership
Guideline specializes in seamless and secure retirement plans that companies nationwide can offer their employees. After launching a successful online system, they wanted to extend their infrastructure to provide a new mobile app experience offering individuals more convenience, control, and significantly more transparency, while driving retention for the companies that make up Guideline’s customer base.
When Guideline approached Instrument with this fast-moving project, it presented an opportunity to amplify their technology expertise and cover more ground faster, so PRPL joined the team as Instrument’s technology and development partner—and we started building.
Technical Design and Development
Mobile app development can come with its challenges. Mobile app development for the highly regulated financial sector with sensitive employee data can introduce actual problems—but we came ready with solutions. From user authentication to personalized profile settings, our development team was building with hard requirements from the start—all while working to create a simple and intuitive user experience. While features like Face ID and biometric logins turned out to be more straightforward than expected, developing seamless access proved more difficult due to the rigid data restrictions.
For the tech stack, our decision to build with React Native to create two applications from just one code-base called for significantly more design precision and additional testing, but it ensured a consistent user experience across all devices. It also meant that Guideline’s internal technology team had only one programming language to deal with, so supporting and enhancing the app experience would be easier.
Project Management and Support
Since 2014, we’ve been offering an Agency Partnership model at PRPL where we team up with and support a range of different branding and marketing agencies in various capacities, providing strategy, creative, technical development, consulting, and more. Our collaboration with Instrument resulted in another successful project under this umbrella. Using project management platforms like ClickUp and Slack, we offered more organized, consolidated, and cross-team support for Instrument and Guideline. Through diligent planning, we managed multiple points of contact and unique perspectives from key stakeholders while maintaining the resources needed to continue tracking against our aggressive launch date.
Introducing a Smarter Way to Save
From quick snapshots of total funds and educational tooltips to multi-factor authentication, the Guideline mobile app provides user-friendly features employees need to manage virtually every aspect of their 401(k) account. While Instrument provided the design support and we remained focused on leading the technical development, we identified the need for additional collaboration and consulting to build out more intuitive features and enhance the overall experience across every platform and device.
User Dashboard
Our user dashboard gives users a detailed look at their total 401(k) amount, contribution amounts per pay period (with the ability to change it in real-time), a dial to easily show amounts contributed versus employer matching, and a bar chart to show all-time returns over different periods. Changing and viewing these different options gives users a better view of long-term effects without the commitment.
Contributions
Ranging from percentages to dollar amounts, users can manage and manipulate their traditional 401(k) and Roth IRA options to get a clearer picture of what an employer contribution would look like for their total investment in real-time.
Portfolio Recommendations
The app’s Wizard Walkthrough prompts users through a series of questions, including when they’d like to retire, how much they want to invest, their perceived level of risk tolerance, and an ideal target. The result is a thorough Portfolio Recommendations feature that provides fast, accurate, easy-to-follow guidance the user can act on or revisit.
Account Center
Whether users want to manage beneficiaries, update their personal information, oversee withdrawals, download statements, view plan details, or get help, the Account Center houses a range of quick solutions complete with multi-factor and biometric authentication for added security.
Onboarding
Once a new user downloads the app, Onboarding guides them through step-by-step instructions on how to quickly and easily set up an account, including important information on deferrals, funds set-up, and more.
Retirement Reimagined
From the immersive design to the vast range of technical capabilities, this project is a testament to the power of two specialized teams coming together. The launch of the Guideline app is another step towards continuing its mission to help employees save for a retirement they can look forward to—and with convenient access to the money that matters most, that future looks even more promising.
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