my Role

Product Design Lead
User Research
Product Strategy

Project Description

Our team was given the strategic prompt to investigate product potential within the topic of financial wellness. As one of the founding members of this team and the lead product designer, I shaped the product vision from the beginning alongside our team’s product strategists. I collaborated side-by-side throughout product definition, market research, and initial user research phases, and then led the team (including another designer) through the design process to turn our refined idea into reality. This included articulating an initial user journey and key user flows, low-fidelity wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes and an initial design system to deliver to our development team.

Bloom asserts that financial wellness is primarily driven by good financial behavior, and seeks to empower users to establish good habits through practice exercises.

Here is a summary of my wide-ranging contributions to the project overall:

Primary and secondary research

Co-facilitated multiple rounds of 1:1 user interviews, supported a digital focus group with 100+ live users, synthesized findings into personas. Studied industry reports, read industry books, interviewed experts.

Market analysis

Led the effort to develop a database of over 60 both competitive and comparative companies, mapped all companies to a 2x2 matrix, and identified white space opportunity areas.

Concept Testing

Collaborated with team to articulate concepts: creative combinations of existing products that fit within the identified opportunity space; co-facilitated user interviews to test concepts and identify which aspects resonated most.

Refining Concept

Synthesized findings from concept tests, personas, and market analysis; developed three product concepts (marketplace, journey, coach); led team through an assessment work session to choose a direction.

UX Design

Developed customer journey map; led team through user empathy-building experience; created user flow to map screens and paths through product experience; drafted wireframes and prototypes for evaluative testing.

UI Design

Designed three key experiences of the app: onboarding, “blooms” exercises, and tracking; developed custom illustrations adapted from illustration kit (~25 of 50+ total); established design system of color, type, and components; conducted accessibility audit to ensure product met WCAG AA 2.1.

Early branding and Marketing

Led team through initial branding exercise to define tone and brand values; established pre-launch social presence, creating all profile assets and content; developed content strategy for, wrote, and designed initial marketing site.

Design Operations

Maintained design backlog and prioritized design work; tracked outstanding design questions to be researched and user needs to be met; managed design task estimation, slicing, and assignments per sprint

NOTE: Contact me for in-process artifacts and more details about my design process for key product experiences.