Helping customers invest with more confidence

Outcomes:

• Increase in trading volume

• Increase in trading on mobile

• Thousands of asset searches in the first 3 months post-launch

The challenge

When I joined the team, there was no investment discovery journey in the mobile app. Customers who wanted to explore investment options had no way to browse, search, or learn about available assets. The NPS score reflected the gap.

The business goal was clear: build a mobile-first investment experience that lets customers explore, learn, and invest, whether they're a first-time investor or an experienced one.

My role

I led the design end-to-end for 12 months, working within a cross-functional product squad that included a product owner, tech lead, business analyst, front-end developers, and a UX writer.

My responsibilities covered UX strategy, user flows, prototyping, research, stakeholder presentations, design system compliance, accessibility and supporting the engineering team through to delivery.

Understanding the domain

Before I opened Figma, I spent my first few weeks running interviews with senior stakeholders across the investments team. I wanted to understand the full investment universe the bank offered: what asset types were available, how the business logic worked, what data the platform could surface, and what had already been tried before I arrived.

I also reviewed existing qualitative and quantitative research studies to understand the target audience and build on prior work rather than starting from scratch.

This groundwork shaped every design decision that followed. Working in a complex financial domain, you can't design good information architecture without first understanding the information.

Defining the UX strategy

I worked closely with the product owner early on to align on the product vision, project constraints, and how we would measure success, both from a user experience perspective and a product delivery perspective.

A few things we agreed on upfront:

• We would follow an iterative design process: identify problems, ideate, test with customers, then move to development.

• Every design decision would be grounded in evidence from existing research or new testing.

• We would design the full north star experience first, then phase it back for delivery.

Designing the north star

Product squads naturally want to break scope into small, deliverable pieces. That works well for engineering. For design, it creates a risk. If you only ever think one phase ahead, you end up with an experience that no one planned at the full journey level.

My approach was to design the complete end state first, covering every scenario, edge case, and screen state and then work backwards with the product owner and tech lead to agree on phasing. This gave the whole team a shared picture of where we were heading and meant that phase one decisions didn't create problems for phase two.

I used FigJam to design detailed user flows and ran working sessions with the product owner and tech lead to identify technical constraints and delivery risks early.

I presented ideas to the team and senior stakeholders at regular intervals, using interactive prototypes to communicate complex flows. Every presentation explained what problem are we solving, what does the evidence say, and what trade-offs did I consider.

Testing with users

Once the core journey was designed, I planned a round of user research to validate it before moving into development.

At this stage, no UX researcher was available for the project. Rather than delay testing or skip it, I ran an unmoderated research study using UserTesting.com. This let us recruit participants quickly and get genuine feedback to the prototype within the project timeline.

I worked with the UX writer to make sure the tone of voice across the designs was right before testing. After completing the research, I prepared a findings presentation for stakeholders that included specific design recommendations alongside the evidence.

The research uncovered several issues I hadn't anticipated and led to meaningful changes before a line of production code was written.

Key design decisions

Search and browse investments

The core question was how customers would actually navigate an investment catalogue with hundreds of assets. Research showed two distinct behaviours: customers who knew what they wanted and needed to find it quickly, and customers who were still learning and needed to browse by category or theme.

The solution combined a global search (covering shares, funds, ETFs, and trusts) with structured browse paths that let customers explore by asset type. Filters gave experienced investors a way to narrow results; educational context on each asset type gave less experienced investors the confidence to explore.

Surfacing market data in context

An early stakeholder ask was to include market data, index performance, top risers, directly in the discovery experience. The design challenge was making this feel informative without being overwhelming or misleading for less confident investors.

I worked closely with the investments and compliance teams to agree on what data to show, how to frame it, and what regulatory disclosures were required. The final solution surfaced relevant market context at the right point in the journey, supported by clear labelling and disclaimers.

Navigating compliance without compromising the experience

In a regulated environment, every design decision involving financial information goes through risk and compliance review. I brought the compliance team into the process early. When requirements conflicted with good UX, I worked through the tension with the compliance team to find solutions that met the regulatory need without damaging the experience.

Accessibility was built into the process throughout. All designs were validated against WCAG AA standards before handoff.

Working with engineering

I worked closely with the tech lead throughout design, which meant most technical constraints were identified and resolved before handoff. During implementation, I conducted regular design reviews with front-end developers and provided CSS guidance where needed to make sure the final build reflected the design system standards.

My computer engineering background helped here. Conversations about API constraints, data availability, and implementation trade-offs were faster because I understood the technical context.

Impact

The new explore investments experience launched and delivered measurable results within the first three months:

• Increase in trading volume

• Increase in trading on mobile

• Thousands of asset searches in the first 3 months post-launch

The investment journeys continue to evolve, with new features being added based on ongoing user feedback.

What I learned

Designing for financial services at scale requires patience and precision in equal measure. The most valuable habit I developed on this project was making every decision visible, explaining what problem I was solving, why I made the choices I made, and what evidence backed them up. In a large organisation with many stakeholders, that transparency is what keeps a design moving forward.

The north star approach also proved its worth. Designing the complete end state before negotiating phases gave the team confidence and kept the phased delivery coherent. It takes more time upfront but it saves significantly more time later.