Thrive

Design Process

To ensure that I was approaching this project with my users in mind, I used the design thinking process. Through this human-centered approach, I worked through the phases of understanding, exploring and materializing a solution for testing.

Primary Research

User Interviews

To dive deeper into the problem space, I conducted several remote user interviews with women between the ages of 25-45 who value financial health. I asked 14 open-ended questions relating to how they manage their finances to better understand their common pain points, motivations and behaviours.

I analyzed my users’ answers by sorting them into an affinity map and synthesized 3 main themes.

Design Challenge

Having pinpointed who I’m designing for and where my design solution could be of help, I developed a How Might We statement to help inspire innovative ideas to solve problems found during user research.

How might we guide Canadian women to find helpful tools and resources in order to plan for a secure financial future?

User Persona

Using my research findings and data from the interview participants, I developed a persona to represent my target user. I referenced the persona throughout the design process to ensure I was making design decisions with my user in mind and creating an empathy-led solution.

Meet Charlotte! A young professional who is looking to expand her knowledge of personal finance and investing and take steps toward planning for her future.

Experience Map

Next, I put together an experience map to understand Charlotte’s current journey when trying to invest for retirement. By defining each stage of her experience, I was able to identify areas of opportunity for my design solution to intervene.

Task Flow

I decided to focus on the core themes of Financial Knowledge and Investing for my main task flow. Based on my secondary research and interview findings, I learned that while lack of financial knowledge is an issue for women, not investing is their biggest barrier to growing wealth. I felt it was important to address both of these issues in my digital solution.

I created a task flow diagram to show how Charlotte would open and fund an investment account. My challenge was to figure out how I could provide Charlotte with opportunities to gain knowledge during the investing process.

Sketches

With my main task flow in mind, I referenced existing UI components and other financial apps and created a UI inspiration board. Knowing the core features and functions to include, I then took pencil to paper and sketched out several versions of key screens. Continuous iterations were made to improve the app’s functionality and user experience, eventually producing the first prototype.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Next, I converted my paper sketches into grey-scale mid-fidelity wireframes using Figma and created a working prototype. By working with mid-fi wireframes, I was able to quickly test out layouts and components before introducing visual identity and moving into high-fidelity wireframes.

Usability Testing

I prepared for usability testing by creating a test plan and test script to ensure a smooth experience for my participants. I conducted 2 rounds of remote usability tests with 5 participants per round. The results provided key insights into the user’s experience of the app and how it could be improved.

Given the time constraint, I created a design prioritization matrix to help determine what changes should be prioritized.

Improve Design

Referring to the design prioritization matrix, I could see that most of the issues would require low effort to fix but bring high value to the user. For this reason, I decided to tackle all 8 issues to make the biggest impact on improving the app.

Visual Identity

With a tested and refined prototype, I was ready to introduce the brand and visual identity and start designing the hi-fidelity prototype.

Through my research, users expressed that many financial apps have busy interfaces, showing numbers and graphs that are difficult to understand, leaving them feeling overwhelmed and put off. With this knowledge, I decided the UI should be modern and clean.

Referring back to my persona Charlotte, I wanted the brand to be positive and encouraging, like getting advice from a friend. I went through several brainstorming sessions to develop the brand identity and ideate on how the brand’s voice could be communicated visually.

High Fidelity Prototype

After testing, multiple iterations, developing the visual identity and colour injection trials with consideration for the 60:30:10 rule, I was ready to produce the high-fidelity prototype. I made accessibility a priority, ensuring my colours had high contrast meeting WCAG’s AAA Accessibility Standard.

Key Features

Thrive was designed to address the current pain points associated with investing, meet user needs and get more women investing through a simplified process. Through the UX design process, I was able to pinpoint these key features.

FEATURE 1

Seamless onboarding

Get familiar! Learn about Thrive’s mission, what it offers and how it’s going to benefit you.

FEATURE 2

Goal-based investing

Simplify the process and start your investing journey by defining your goal. Let Thrive do the work by guiding you to the best funds and account types.

FEATURE 3

Get a personalized investment portfolio

Thrive will create an investment portfolio that is tailor-made to your unique circumstance.

FEATURE 4

Open an account without all the fuss

Go paperless! Open an account directly in the app without all the paperwork.

FEATURE 5

Securely link your bank

Thrive uses Plaid to securely link your bank account while keeping your credentials private.

FEATURE 6

Choose how to invest

It’s all about options! Choose how you’d like to invest and pick an investment schedule that’s right for you.

FEATURE 7

Expand your knowledge

Continue learning with curated articles and workshops accessed directly from your dashboard.

Responsive Marketing Website

To explore the product from a business and marketing perspective, I designed a responsive website for desktop and mobile to highlight its key features to potential users. Through this process, I learned the importance of product marketing and how to build designs for both platforms.

Business Perspective

There is a large potential for business by creating a financial product that is marketed specifically to women. Women make up more than half the workforce, they drive a large portion of consumer spending and they’re now earning more than ever before. Simplifying the investing process and providing financial education in order to increase customer conversion is a win win.

There are many financial products on the market. What makes Thrive different?

• Access to personalized financial products: the algorithm takes into account the user's unique life circumstance. Portfolios are based on the user’s information and tailored to their specific needs

• Easy goal-based investing: simplifies the process of investing by starting with the user’s goals

• Financial education: incorporated into the app at all stages of interaction, with the opportunity to dive deeper through tappable links and the learn section

Next Steps

With more time, I would…

• Add animations to the app and include more interactive graphical elements to communicate potential growth

• Build on the learning section of the app

• Explore opportunities for community building and investing in sustainable, environmentally and socially responsible initiatives

Key Learnings

This was my first UX project and it was such a rewarding experience! My biggest takeaways were the value of testing early and often, how design systems can inform strong design and the importance of research and empathy when it comes to building impactful products. I learned how to pivot when needed, set realistic goals and be open to sharing work in-progress to improving the product.