DesigningforFinancialBehavior
–25%
One-fund concentration
Diversification up across 5 investment strategies
Impact
Investment dashboard — before and after
Context
The Problem
When we mapped user behavior, the pattern was that users weren't distributing their investments. They picked one option and stayed there.
The hypothesis: Users default to the conservative option because the product gives them no other frame to work with.
After several user interviews, one quote gave us the main insight: "I started with the conservative strategy because I didn't know how to invest or diversify with other strategies. If I had known before, I'm sure it would have been different."
The 3 Core Design Decisions
1. Start with the person, not the product
Instead of opening with a list of funds, the experience starts with a few simple questions: What are you saving for? How much can you set aside consistently? How do you feel about risk? Here's what we suggest for your situation — not a generic default.
2. Guided autonomy instead of forced restriction
Two distinct paths — one with structure and progressive unlocking tied to real financial milestones, one with full immediate access for users who want autonomy. No paternalism.
3. Regulatory compliance as a trust signal
The risk questionnaire couldn't change — fixed by law. But where it lived in the flow could. Moved from random legal interruption to a meaningful step toward getting a personalized recommendation.
Process
Key Deliverables
Outcome
The product shipped with dual-path architecture, full regulatory compliance, and a behavioral framework validated with real users before any development started.
The whole experience got restructured. Tying investment access to real financial milestones, and repositioning the regulatory questionnaire as a meaningful step instead of a legal checkbox, made the product work with how users actually think.
Post-launch, single-fund concentration dropped around 25% as users redistributed across 5 investment strategies. Firebase tracking keeps maturing as more users move through the milestones.
Reflection
People don't read disclaimers. They respond to structure, milestones, and a sense of moving forward.
Users don't need to understand compound interest to feel confident about investing. They need to feel like the product understands their situation. That's a framing problem, not an information problem.
The risk questionnaire couldn't change. But where it sat in the flow could. Moving it from compliance detour to integrated allocation step turned friction into a feature.
Every decision we made touched Legal, Backend, Growth, and Data simultaneously. The workshops, the business rule documentation, the structured handoffs — that coordination work was as important as the UX itself.