Willow

A Fin-tech company creating a platform to help empower women with financial wellness and awareness.

Task

Create a platform tailored to women's financial needs matching them with trusted financial coaches.

Timeline

Three weeks of user interviews and usability testing. One week synthesizing data and four weeks spent designing, iterating, and prototyping the consumer platform end-to-end experience.

My Role

Sole UX/UI designer tasked with creating low-high fidelity wireframes  prototypes.

Research Process

  • At Willow developing trust in the fragmented industry of financial coaching was a top priority. Initially, the website and concept of UI for Willow heavily focused on Illustrations. After interviewing users, we realized women did not connect with the illustrations. Almost all women we interviewed cited a negative association with financial advisors and coaches due to a general feeling of a lack of respect, empathy, and willingness to educate. Women would often speak about meeting with advisors who were dismissive and left feeling overlooked and underestimated.

  • After synthesizing data from the affinity mapping exercise, the key pain points that emerged were women lacking financial confidence and support. We spoke to women about feeling they did not have the "brain" for finances and relinquished control to their spouses. Many were intimidated by their finances and did not know what resources were available to them. Women who were controlling their finances were left feeling patronized and uncared for by their services.

  • Identifying economic life journeys gives users a roadmap of what Willow's coaching experience would provide. Therefore, we created Personas to capture a range of experiences women would be experiencing that would drive them to seek financial guidance.

Design Process

  • Women felt a lack of financial confidence, understanding, and trust in the financial industry. We needed to address the needs of our clients and show what Willow could do differently than other companies offering financial services. Our first step in design was to define what financial coaching meant and how it varied from financial advisors. 

  • We accomplished demystifying the financial coaching Willow offered by highlighting three life journeys. Featuring an interactive and visual step-by-step journey showed women what they could expect to gain from financial coaching in their position before they got involved.

  • We iterated upon our designs as we learned what was feasible in terms of the development timeline. Initially, we had more personalization and life journeys incorporated into our step-by-step guide. Still, we lacked the time and resources to devote to this aspect of our MVP and had to simplify it.

Delivery Process

  • Ultimately our team created a design of three step-by-step examples of life journeys and how Willow could help them with their financial goals. This feature accomplished two purposes: 1. Create a visual guide for the process, and 2. Provide depth and value to the user that connects to their current life journey need. **Note This website has been updated and no longer features this UI Design.

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