What I loved about this project is it was delivering real value to customers, not just the business. If this project was successful we’d be helping hundreds of customers earn thousands of pounds (in the form of government bonuses) towards the purchase of their dream home. That’s really cool!

MY ROLE
I was the Lead Product Designer of the Milestones project, from the initial concept to the beta launch.

I was responsible for initial concept ideation, concept validation testing, wireframing and prototyping, usability testing, final UI, and animation design.

UX RESEARCH

THE PROBLEM

"It's just impossible for me to save the kind of money I would need for a deposit, I might as well enjoy my life rather than endlessly save for no reason"

This was the insight uncovered by the Moneybox User Research Team. Young savers don’t believe they’ll ever own a home, leading them to prioritize enjoying life now over saving. When they do save, it's often an afterthought with leftover funds. This mindset causes them to miss out on a 20% government bonus.

PROJECT SCOPE
Team: 1 Lead Product Designer (me), 1 Project Manager, and a handful of engineers (iOS, Android, and Cloud Apps). Timeline: 4 weeks (2 Sprints).

TOOLS
Figma, Slack, Monday, Confluence, JIRA

Early-stage savers doubt they'll ever save enough for a house down payment

With this in mind, we asked ourselves the question…

The Moneybox UX Research team conducted an exhaustive survey to understand why early-stage savers were not contributing more to their LISAs. Many would open a LISA, make an initial deposit, and then stop. Through interviews and surveys with hundreds of customers, we uncovered these key insights:

I built a hypothesis around the psychological principle of self-efficacy, where achieving smaller, manageable tasks builds confidence and reinforces the belief that the larger goal is achievable.

We’d give customers 10 Milestones to hit, starting at £100, and getting progressively larger until they had saved £5,000 (a number our research showed was the tipping point where people started to believe they were capable of saving large amounts).

THE SOLUTION

Giving customers the tools, setting them up for success, and encouraging them along the way.

So how did we get here?

INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM STATEMENT

INITIAL CONCEPTS
Once I had my hypothesis, I needed to find the best visual metaphor to convey the concept. I sketched* several goal-tracking designs based on established patterns and presented them to customers during a concept validation session. I asked which design they found most engaging and believed would keep them engaged throughout the experience.

* I find hand-drawn sketches work best when concept testing as participants immediately recognize these are not final designs, feel more comfortable giving honest feedback, and get less distracted by minor details.

WIREFRAMES AND PROTOTYPE

The concept which proved the most popular was the top-down, “Duolingo”-style pathway design. With this chosen direction, I set about creating a prototype of the experience. I started by architecting all the user flows this experience would need to support, including the onboarding process, and building a wireframe prototype in Figma.

With the prototype complete I scheduled five user testing sessions with real Moneybox customers to validate the concept was functional, and get valuable anecdotal feedback on the design and concept. And it’s a good thing I did, as the feedback received changed the direction of the design significantly.

Feedback on the initial design

• Participants liked the concept, with 5/5 participants saying they felt an experience like this would encourage them to save more, and more regularly.

• A majority of participants wanted the ability to choose their own Milestones; both the number of Milestones and the values of them.

• Customers disliked the map and didn’t think it was necessary.* As one participant said, “I understand the concept of saving, I don’t need a #%@! map.”

*This shows the importance of continual testing with customers. While the map concept tested well in the ideation phase, when it came to the actual execution customers had a different opinion.

DESIGN ITERATIONS

Based on the feedback from the usability testing sessions, I had a few challenges I needed to solve:

• I reduced the map to a simple progress indicator at the top of the Details page, as this provides the same exact utility, but in a much more spatially efficient way. 

• I added a feature showing users when they'd hit their next milestone, both in weeks and by date. This was linked to a "Adjust my timeline" CTA, allowing users to experiment with increasing their deposits and instantly see the updated milestone completion date. If they chose to speed up their progress, they could apply those changes immediately.

• The biggest addition was designing an onboarding process where users set their financial goal, target completion date, number of milestones, and whether the milestones should be progressive or equal in value. The system then generated customized milestones for their approval.

THE FINAL MVP PRODUCT

Onboarding and Milestone Setting

Tracking and Accelerating Milestones

Rewards and Motivation

Through testing and iterative design, I was now confident I had created a quality user-centered design. The dev team began building Milestones and we awaited the Beta release. Milestones would be rolled out to a segmented group of early-stage savers so we could monitor their engagement, collect feedback, and track the experience’s performance against the KPIs we had determined at the beginning of the project.

OUTCOMES
In terms of engagement and increasing contributions, Milestones was hugely successful. While I can’t share the actual figures, more than 50% of segmented users increased their weekly or one-off contributions, with overall contributions in that segment increasing by over 200% during the initial rollout. WOW! 🤩

We also got great feedback from Moneybox users:

As a result, Milestones was fast-tracked to rollout to a much larger group. Phase 2 was also moved to the highest priority for the next financial year.

IN CONCLUSION
Moneybox Milestones succeeded because we focused on a real customer problem identified through research and adhered to user-centered design principles, including:

• Conducting broad discovery before settling on a solution.

• Validating solutions with real customers.

• Making iterative improvements based on feedback and data.

• Prioritizing customer value over business goals.
  

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