February, 2022
Designing for Financial Clarity and Confidence
The Challenge
Millions of people experience financial stress—not just from debt, but from the emotional disconnect between their money and their daily lives. Through early research, we uncovered a deeper problem:
A lack of visibility and understanding was fuelling financial anxiety, unhealthy habits, and disengagement.
People didn’t know how credit scores worked. They were surprised to learn how small daily choices—like grabbing lunch out—could add up over time. And most importantly, they didn’t feel in control of their financial behaviour.
My Role
As the lead designer on this initiative, I helped shape the research, synthesise findings, and define the product experience. I worked closely with product, engineering, and behavioural experts to design and iterate on features that made financial behaviour more transparent, actionable, and empowering.
Our Process
Qualitative interviews uncovered recurring pain points: lack of credit understanding, unconscious spending, and low emotional connection to money.
Surveys and market research validated these trends across a broader audience.
Co-design sessions helped us understand what “control” and “confidence” meant to different types of users.
This insight formed the foundation for a product aimed at demystifying credit, visualising behaviour, and rewarding progress.
The Solution
We designed an app that helps people understand, track, and improve their financial habits:
📊 Behavioural visualisation: Tools that surface patterns in spending—especially on overlooked daily habits.
🧠 Education through context: Micro-interactions and plain-language copy that explain how credit works, where to focus, and what to ignore.
🏠 Credit-building through real life: Users could build credit through rent payments—a positive habit often ignored by traditional credit systems.
The design focused on clarity over complexity, guidance over judgement, and agency over automation.
The Impact
The final product gave users a clearer picture of their financial lives and made them feel more capable of managing it.
Early testing showed increased self-reported confidence in financial decision-making, and higher engagement with spending insights compared to benchmark apps.
Even more importantly, we validated that empathy + design = real empowerment.
