Open banking savings
Investment app
2021
Product design
The challenge
Too many people had cash in the wrong place. The app used open banking to connect to current accounts, understand spending, and nudge people to save/invest (e.g., into a stocks & shares ISA). Early MVP feedback showed confusion in onboarding and distrust in income/expense insights.
My role
Senior UX Designer embedded for 6 months.
Evaluation, UX strategy, research, concept design and testing, handover, and improved team ways of working to validate ideas faster.
Impact
Prioritised multi-account support on the roadmap; designed and validated the connection flow.
Increased insight trust by enabling manual categorisation and adopting a chronological transaction view.
Reduced onboarding confusion by clarifying third-party steps.
Raised team maturity: introduced repeatable UX methods (journey mapping, card sorting, rapid tests) and a component kit that sped up research/iteration.
What I did
Assessed the MVP: reviewed surveys, analytics, and usability-related bugs.
Mapped onboarding pain: journey maps to visualise where users dropped or got confused (esp. third-party sign-up).
Framed hypotheses: multi-account needs and insight accuracy as top problems to tackle.
Ran fast tests: card sorting to shape transaction categories, prototype testing to validate flows.
Built for speed: created a light component system with a UI designer to iterate prototypes and test rounds faster.
Partnered with devs: aligned on open banking constraints, data taxonomy, and what we could ship in the short term.
Key insights that shaped the work
Multi-account support: many people split money across multiple accounts, had irregular income, or used joint accounts. Single-account MVP produced unreliable balances.
Accuracy matters: uncategorised transactions led to distrust in “income & expenses” insights.
Onboarding breaks trust: being bounced to a third-party sign-up felt risky and derailed momentum.
Key design decisions
Add multiple accounts (flow): introduced an “add another account” step directly after the first bank connection to keep momentum while improving accuracy.
Fix categorisation: designed manual categorisation for uncategorised transactions; informed taxonomy via card sorting (e.g., salary, groceries, bills, holidays).
Make insights legible: switched from abstract averages to a chronological list (bank-statement mental model) so people can scan, understand, and trust.
Smoother onboarding: clearer expectations around third-party handoff, more explicit progress cues, and tighter copy.
Constraints I navigated
Data categorisation: open banking categorisation wasn't perfect.
MVP handover: inherited an agency-designed proposition, evolved it without resetting timelines.
Compliance & trust: kept flows transparent and copy plain-language, with permissions explained up front.
This case study is part of my public portfolio.
Some of my most impactful projects are confidential, I can share them privately on request.