SOAR design challenge
The challenge
Design a general fintech dashboard that helps users manage personal finances, track spending, and monitor investments. The design should reflect your chosen brand identity with a modern, clean, and professional aesthetic, while delivering an intuitive, efficient, and accessible user experience.
Personal Finance Dashboard
To design a Personal Finance Dashboard that genuinely supports users, I began by identifying core pain points and behavioural barriers. Reviewing industry research, usability studies, and financial behaviour reports helped clarify what users struggle with and what value a fintech product must deliver.
Unified financial visibility
Users want a consolidated view of balances, spending, and investments in one place.
Intuit Consumer Insights, 2022
Reduced cognitive load in understanding money data
Users need help interpreting numbers, trends, and financial jargon.
OECD Global Financial Literacy Report, 2023
Behavioural guidance, not just information display
Users need cues that tell them what the data means and what they should do next.
BIT, 2021
Continuous monitoring of spending & budgeting
Users want tools that help track spending patterns and prevent overspending.
NAB User Behaviour Study, 2022
Simple interpretation of investment performance
Users want investing insights presented in a way that feels understandable and actionable.
Fidelity Investor Mindset Report, 2023
These needs shaped my solution direction — shifting from static financial reporting to a guided, insight-driven experience that simplifies complexity, encourages healthy behaviours, and gives users clarity and control over their money.
UI breakdown
Account summary
Displays the user’s total available funds across accounts, paired with a contextual insight highlighting key behavioural changes such as spending patterns or anomalies. This module includes balance visibility control, fund filtering, and a call-to-action for reallocating funds.
Spending overview
Summarizes monthly expenditures with a quick insight comparing performance versus previous periods. Users can drill into detailed breakdowns, category budgets, and remaining allowances via progress bars that track budget usage
Investment portfolio
Presents a consolidated view of invested wealth, overall growth, breakdown by asset class, and individual asset performance with delta indicators. Filters allow users to toggle between crypto, stocks, bonds, and top gainers, while insight cards highlight portfolio drivers.
Design decision
User needs
Design solution
Rationale
Unified financial visibility
A consolidated home screen displaying balance, spending, investments, and recent activity in one scroll.
Increases clarity and reduces effort to piece information together, improving trust, confidence, and engagement.
Reduced cognitive load in interpreting finances
AI insight cards placed under each module to explain trends and contextualize behaviour.
Helps users make sense of data faster, reducing friction and improving literacy without overwhelming UI.
Behavioural guidance and next-step direction
Insight cards include actionable CTAs (e.g., “Check transactions”, “View top gainers”).
Converts information into action, improving decision-making and encouraging deeper product usage.
Continuous spending control and budgeting awareness
Spending overview with breakdown, category budgets, progress bars, and “money left” labels.
Supports habit formation and proactive financial management, increasing retention and perceived value of budgeting tools.
Simple interpretation of investment performance
Investment portfolio with asset growth, contribution insights, and category filters (Crypto/Stocks/Bonds).
Makes investing approachable, boosting user confidence and wallet stickiness through clearer understanding.
Transactions
To design a transaction experience that feels useful rather than overwhelming, I first identified core user pain points through secondary research and fintech UX studies.
Quick verification and anomaly detection
Users need to validate their money movement and detect unfamiliar or suspicious activity easily.
VISA Consumer Fraud Insights, 2023
Fast lookup and filtering
Users want to search or locate past transactions instantly without scrolling long lists.
Revolut User Feedback Report, 2022
Categorization for spending understanding
Users expect clear labeling of merchant, category, and payment source to make transactions meaningful at a glance.
NAB Behavioural Finance Study, 2022
Contextual information without ambiguity
Users need metadata such as date, method, account source, and counterpart to reduce uncertainty.
Monzo App UX Audit, 2021
Trend awareness, not just listings
Users want their transaction history to prompt insights, such as spending spikes, recurring patterns, or unusual behaviour.
Intuit/Mint Behavioural Intelligence Report, 2022
From these insights, I structured the Transactions page to go beyond listing, it helps users verify, search, understand context, and discover behaviour patterns through category grouping, stacked metadata, and AI-driven insights.
UI breakdown
Date grouping with net daily flow
Groups transactions by day while surfacing a daily net balance (+/–) to give users immediate insight into whether the day was net spending or earning. This reinforces spending awareness, allows anomaly spotting (e.g., unusually high outflow), and mirrors mental budgeting behaviours where users evaluate finances per payday, per weekend, or per event cycle.
Transaction card format
Uses a structured card layout showing category icon, merchant name, payment source, and amount with directional color signalling (green for inflow, red for outflow). This format enables fast scanning, traceability, and verification while supporting actions like dispute, budgeting, or categorization, without tapping into the detail page.
Design decision
User needs
Design solution
Rationale
Fast validation of money movement
Date grouping with daily net inflow/outflow
Converts lists into insight, helping users track trends and detect irregularities.
Quick search and lookup
Search bar and filter control
Reduces effort and time needed to locate transactions, improving usability and trust.
Clear interpretation of where money goes
Category icons, merchant names, source labels
Gives meaning to each entry at a glance, lowering cognitive effort.
Awareness beyond raw numbers
Color-coded amounts and metadata stacking
Allows quick emotional recognition (income vs. expense), improving comprehension.
Confidence in financial transparency
Clean hierarchy, spacing, and large touch targets
Makes reviewing history approachable and reduces uncertainty, boosting financial confidence.
Investment portfolio
To design an investment experience that feels empowering rather than intimidating, I first identified core user needs from behavioural research and wealth-tech UX reports.
Clear visibility of portfolio health
Users want an instant grasp of portfolio value, performance trend, and asset allocation without piecing numbers together.
Fidelity Investor Mindset Report, 2023
Meaningful return signals, not jargon
Users struggle interpreting raw gains/losses, they need simple deltas, trends, and attribution (e.g., what drove performance).
Vanguard Retail Investor Study, 2022
Contextual insight + what to do next
Users expect apps to interpret performance and recommend actions, not only display data.
State Street Investor Behaviour Report, 2023
Segmentation & comparison
Investors want to slice performance by asset class (e.g., crypto vs. stocks) and compare performance over time ranges.
Revolut Wealth UX Assessment, 2022
Assurance and anomaly spotting
Users need to quickly detect unusual changes or high volatility risks to protect portfolio value.
JP Morgan Wealth Behaviour Report, 2022
From these insights, I structured the Investment Portfolio page to improve literacy, confidence, and intentional investing through
UI breakdown
Total portfolio value
Shows overall value, all-time return delta, and insight card to explain drivers. Builds confidence through immediate clarity and behavioural guidance.
Portfolio growth chart
Visualizes time-based performance with range filters. Enables trend awareness and supports decision making without complex reading.
Asset breakdown list
Shows individual holdings, value, and delta. Lets users identify outperformers and laggards while tracking contribution.
Allocation section
Exposes diversification across crypto, stocks, and bonds. Helps users understand risk exposure and balance.
Transactions snapshot
Surfaces buy/sell events affecting value. Enables traceability and trust in performance.
Design decision
User needs
Design solution
Rationale
Understand portfolio health at a glance
Total value card with % change and insight
Reduces ambiguity and boosts confidence through guided interpretation
Detect what is driving change
AI insight explaining asset contribution
Eliminates guesswork, turning numbers into learnings
Compare performance over time
Time-range chart (1D/1W/1M/YTD/All)
Supports long- vs short-term decision behaviours
Evaluate individual assets
Asset list with delta indicators
Helps identify winners/laggards for action planning
Assess diversification and risk
Allocation breakdown by asset class
Encourages balanced investing and risk awareness
