Thrivent Financial
Marriage Vitality Platform
Exploring current and future needs of married couples
Thrivent, a mission-driven financial services organization, sought to explore the viability of an insurance and investment product aimed at improving the relationships of its married member-owners.
Field Research
In-person interviews across multiple cities were conducted to capture diverse perspectives on relationships and marriage.
In each location, we gathered insights into how couples and their support networks defined strong marriages, managed challenges, and sought guidance.
- 5 married couples
- 1 engaged couple
- 2 divorced individuals
- 2 advisors
- 2 pastors
- 7 married couples
- 1 engaged couple
- 3 advisors
- 2 pastors
Synthesizing Findings
The data gathered was translated into personas and journey maps that represented distinct user groups and their experiences.
These artifacts guided the team during critical product decision-making moments and created alignment around customer needs. By unpacking the research and presenting it visually, we built a shared understanding with our client collaborators of prospective customers’ relationship dynamics and support needs.
Prioritization
Initial research revealed possible challenges couples face in their relationships.
Brainstorming with clients helped everyone agree on the problems worth solving and generate viable and desirable ideas for building stronger marriages. Stakeholder sessions also helped prioritize themes to address in our concept.
- Build a support system
- Improve interpersonal communication
- Remove stigma from seeking help
- Develop partnering skills together
- Spend time together
- Learn vital marriage skills
- Align common goals
- Practice faith together
Framework Development
Designing a program model capable of evolving to meet the needs of couples and coaches throughout all phases of marriage.
Our service would seek to optimize for jobs to be done by our key people (couples, their relatives, and coaches). It would also leverage Thrivent's established faith-based values.
Prototyping & Testing
We facilitated a process of designing, prototyping, and testing to produce a digital service to connect couples with coaches, and coaches with clients.
Couples were engaged to better understand how our solution might be used for handling marriage's challenging moments and if a coaching service could be useful for short- and long-term growth.
We facilitated tests with coaches to gain a better understanding how our services and feature might fit within their practice, meet business needs, and gauge the desirability of a virtual model of coaching.
Matchmaking Feature
Credentialing for coaches makes it possible to align every couple’s preference with available coaches trained to best meet their needs.
Couples, or individuals, choose coaches whose profile represents the best fit for their need.
Help Requests and Appointments Feature
Relationship issue documentation provides couples with opportunities to engage with program aides to manage issues on their own or to inform their coach when they need more personalized assistance.
Progress Tracking and Growth Features
The coaching platform goes beyond managing a coach’s business; its tools and resources allow coaches to monitor the relationships of their couples, pinpoint areas of improvement, and prioritize opportunities for their personal and professional development.
Support relevant and timely coaching opportunities for couples when a little extra guidance is most valued.
Synthesized Feedback
Taking the feedback from our moderated prototype testing with coaches, we crafted user stories to tell their stories.
These stories not only helped socialize the need for ongoing development and evaluation but also highlighted potential gaps that could hinder adoption of a new platform.