Redesigning the onboarding experience to deliver a personalised financial snapshot at the end of the flow, closing the gap between user effort and meaningful reward. The feature is now partially live and rolling out across the platform.

My role
Leading Product Designer

The problem
The Octopus Money onboarding journey collected detailed financial information from users, but the payoff was not visible until their first coaching call, often weeks later. Users were being asked to invest significant effort without seeing anything meaningful in return.

Storyboard mapping four key touch-points from discovery to coaching, which validated a critical user pain point and confirmed the product opportunity. For B2B SaaS tenants, this was a compounding problem. They needed users to feel excited by the product early. The brief was to embed a compelling "mini plan" within onboarding that demonstrated value upfront, without overwhelming users or compromising the coaching experience that followed.

My approach
Rather than moving straight into a polished high-fidelity design, I started with a medium-fidelity prototype to pressure-test whether we were framing the product correctly. Working in close partnership with a freelance user researcher, we ran several weeks of moderated sessions with non-customers, exploring expectations of coaching, reactions to early financial outputs, and the importance of the human element.

The medium-fidelity prototype was built to drive user interviews. It enabled us to uncover unexpected users needs that shaped the direction of the solution.
User testing discoveries reframed as 'How Might We' questions aligned the team around the problems that mattered most.
Research showed that data visualisation created a powerful moment of recognition, but only when users had provided enough input for the output to feel credible. We iterated carefully on that balance, consulting the coaching team throughout. Their buy-in was not a formality. It was a genuine design input.

I also had to hold two user needs in mind simultaneously: end users moving through onboarding, and B2B tenants who needed the experience to flex around different commercial outcomes.

An iteration exploring contextual insights on every input page. It was ultimately ruled out to preserve the “aha” moment of the outputs page.
I facilitated workshops with Stakeholders to define the output page's information architecture. This revealed competing priorities and created the conditions for informed decision-making.
The solution
The redesigned flow asks fewer questions while delivering a clear, high-level financial snapshot at the end. Users see an early projection of their finances and retirement outlook, alongside tailored prompts guiding their next steps. For SaaS tenants, calls to action are configurable and adapt depending on whether the journey leads to coaching or another outcome.

The feature is now partially live and rolling out. The shift it represents is straightforward to articulate: from a delayed value exchange to an immediate, data-driven moment of insight. From a product that asked a lot and showed nothing, to one that earns engagement by giving something back first.

Final high-fidelity designs crafted end-to-end for touch interfaces, using iconography to inject personality into a minimal SaaS aesthetic. These were taken through to developer handoff.
My reflection
This project sharpened my thinking on designing for two distinct audiences at once. Working as an equal partner with a researcher, rather than treating research as a handoff, meant findings were more actionable and design decisions easier to defend.

The coaching team's concerns also turned out to be a useful creative constraint. Sometimes the most valuable input comes from the people who are most worried about what you're building.