MoneyLion App and Dashboard

APP REDESIGN (2016)

The MoneyLion app is an all in one Personal Finance Management tool (PFM). After linking accounts to the app, MoneyLion estimates a customer's net worth, credit score, and  provides recommendations based in the person's overall financial state.
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As a sole designer in the company, I redesigned the app from the ground-up with a user-centric approach in mind to provide the right product recommendations at the right time.

Problem space

The first version of the app helped users visualize their accounts in a single place, and apply for a loan. During a round of interviews with customers I found the reasons for which the app was falling short retaining users.

  • The look and feel of the app was dark and hard to read, affecting comprehension and perceived value.
  • The navigation and naming of features didn't help users learn what else MoneyLion offered. They also found difficult to relate numbers with concepts.
  • New users often quit the app during onboarding, complaining about the company being pushy towards applying for loans upon download.

Opportunity

At the end of the research phase, I conducted a brainstorm to help the team align on opportunity areas for the design, derived from user problems:

Explorations

Armed with visual potential examples, I demonstrated how the current predominantly dark corporate colors, applied to a mobile UI, lowered legibility. I created alternate solutions that would work better using other blue tones also available in the brand guidelines.
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The UI became instantly positive and bright. This visual demonstration convinced the marketing and business stakeholders to lean towards a clear UI, optimized for screen communication, and consistent with the desktop platform.
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VISUAL DESIGN EXPLORATIONS

In the final design rounds we decided that the iconography next to the titles was not visible. I also re-worked our old tab bar icons. The reward system that we planned before was going to be re-formulated, so we decided to give more weight to the personal finance summary in the app,  giving it a place in the main navigation.

FINAL REDESIGN: THE MAIN FEATURES

Data turned into insights

One of our goals was to provide advice to our customers based in their spending habits. The product team brainstormed different spending habits and situations people might want to avoid.

While the data science team worked with us to provide data that could inform these tips in the UI,
I took the data and concepts and created simple, easy to digest, actionable tips.

Balancing user and business needs

During testing, users didn't express interest when we showed them loan offers in our home screen, but this was crucial to the business.
We opted to present this inside our advice modules, tailoring the message to every person situation. This not only worked to offer loans, it also helped users be aware of their financial actions.

The app personalizes certain options and content to the current user, partly based on CRM data, and partly learning from the user’s most frequent behaviors.

Redesigning the web dashboard

The mobile app was gaining traction, but our desktop presence needed a lift too. Hierarchy was a big problem. Users didn't know where to look at. The rewards aspect of MoneyLion was taking prominent space, and asking users to invite people to use the platform.

When I interviewed a group of people who had loans with us, all of them said that the reason for not sending out invitations, was because they considered money matters very private, and didn't want their friends to know that they asked for a loan. That triggered a team effort to rethink how rewards worked.
For me and my team, the translation from app to web, was not as hard, since we already had an established design language to work with. We just had to find the right structure. I took the dashboards I saw as an inspiration to propose a couple ideas:

We could arrange the design in equal mosaics, represented by each of our features. The re-arrangement of such tiles for different devices would be challenging, and users sometimes would see a lot of empty space.

Inspiration

I looked at what other companies in the space were doing. Data visualization was key, as well as the right balance between prominent numbers and visuals.

A new approach

I made another that proposal arranged the design in three columns dedicated to different information types: Personal status and rewards (left), MoneyLion products used (center), and marketing offerings (right).

This architecture made more sense, since it could easily translate to mobile and tablet, and could grow with the user.

Onboarding

I worked with my product manager to define how to onboard users. We knew from interviews that our users not necessarily want to get a loan when they decide to use MoneyLion. They come initially to get a sense of their net worth, or get a free credit score.

So we decided to use those three pillars in that order, and ask the user what brings them to the platform to onboard them.

Now people could learn from the get go the new way rewards work: Rewards were earned each time users showed good financial habits, like paying a loan on time, new positive milestones in their credit score, or spending a month without overdraft fees. Rewards could be redeemed for gift cards.

Empty states

Empty states were made to help the user know the benefits and use of a specific feature before committing to it.

Status indicators

A piece of feedback we received from users, was that they didn't continue with a loan application because they didn't find any indication in the dashboard of what was the status of their application. Before, we were using an alert message at the top that was easily dismissible.

In the new design, the loan card itself works as the single place of truth for all the information and status we had to deliver.

Impact

22.5M in investment

With the new MoneyLion look and functionality, we attracted investors to make our product stronger and better.

4.4 stars in the app store

The mobile app gained traction among users, and we reached a 4.4 star rating.

4.5 stars on Trustpilot

Our users also felt confident about using MoneyLion on desktop. We earned higher ratings for it.

©2023 Lilian Tellez