Online investment platform
"Sharesies is a digital investment and wealth development platform. Their mission is to give everyone the same investment opportunities and financial empowerment, no matter what amount someone is starting from."
Position
UX/UI Designer
Team
Ashleigh
Grace
Zoe
Me!
My role
Research
User interviews
Usability testing
Workshopping
Prototyping
Project Duration
4 Months
A three to four month master's capstone project with a team of three other designers from the UX cohort, collaborating with designers from Sharesies weekly to discover and create solutions for Sharesies' concerns. In this case study, the majority of UX and UI principles and methodologies will be applied, such as:
plus many more to be discovered
The problem
Sharesies acknowledges it can be overwhelming to get started with investing — adding more options could introduce new challenges and choices that users have to make. One resource to acknowledge is the 'Go-to Guides' (G2G), aiming to help users up-level their understanding of investing with jargon.
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This can be a lengthy read — up to 20–30 minutes. If you're here just for the aesthetic and end product, jump straight to results. Otherwise, grab a beverage and enjoy the read.
Sharesies aims to provide equal opportunity for financial empowerment to everyone regardless of how much they are able to invest. Sharesies wants to move beyond 'just investing' and help users develop financial wealth. During this master study, we will be looking at two products: KiwiSaver and Invest.
Get a great interest rate, plus all the flexibility you need — no minimum deposit, no rules, and no fuss to open.
"Reimagining KiwiSaver to build a new generation of empowered investors, giving users control and confidence to invest their money, and connecting users to their financial goals."
The SHMUXD (Master's of User Experience Design) team will be partnering with Sharesies to better understand the challenges users face and proposing potential solutions to make the experience better for the user.
Combining both Sharesies and SHMUXD team, we call ourselves the
Together as the SHMUXD team, we are so close towards the finish line of our final project of our degree. Fueled by my personal 3–4 extra espresso shots in my coffee and other caffeinated beverages, we tackle our final challenge with high spirits to deliver an amazing product with great results.
We followed the Double Diamond — a framework that keeps discovery and delivery clearly separated. The first diamond is about understanding the problem deeply before narrowing in. The second is about exploring solutions widely before committing to one.
Double Diamond
Using the double diamond design process, we approached the brief by using process to guide and navigate us through a lengthy journey.
These were some of the things we researched:
Discovering what products and services have strong and intuitive onboarding interactions.
Discovering what principles developers use to create an engaging tutorial.
Discovering what Sharesies has created to help their customers confidently learn and understand investing.
Discovering competitors' onboarding process.
Discovering how authors and designers documented their journey for creating successful onboarding.
We researched onboarding principles to understand what makes early user experiences effective — focusing on reducing friction and building confidence from day one.
We explored game design principles — specifically how progress mechanics, rewards, and goal-setting can drive engagement and motivate continued learning within a product.
Secondary desk research helped us map the broader landscape — understanding competitor approaches, industry benchmarks, and best practices in financial product onboarding.
With all that context in my back pocket, I started looking into the principles that actually make onboarding work.
Helpful info is woven into the experience at just the right moment — so it feels like a natural part of what the user is already doing, not a popup interrupting their flow.
Instead of bombarding users with instructions upfront, this type of help only shows up when someone makes a mistake or gets stuck — meeting them exactly where they need it.
Users who want extra help can easily find it, while those who are confident aren't slowed down. It's about giving people control over their own learning pace.
Not every user needs the same level of hand-holding. A first-time user and a tech-savvy one shouldn't have to follow the same path — personalised journeys let everyone move at the pace that suits them.
Games have been solving this exact problem for years — getting players up to speed without them even noticing. So I looked at what we could borrow from game design.
The words on screen do the heavy lifting. Duolingo uses cheerful, encouraging language to nudge users forward — it feels like a friend cheering you on, not a textbook telling you what to do.
Those satisfying little moments — confetti, a level-up sound, a cheerful message — that reward you for making progress. Small wins keep users motivated and coming back.
Learning is baked right into the experience. Plants vs. Zombies 2 disguises its entire tutorial as a playable level — players are picking up mechanics without even realising they're being taught.
Duolingo's lesson maps show you exactly how far you've come and what's ahead. It gives users a clear sense of direction without ever feeling overwhelming — just a friendly nudge to keep going.
With all this secondary research in hand, it was time to see how things actually played out in the real world. Our team did some guerrilla testing — signing up for Sharesies ourselves and going through the current onboarding flow as if we were brand new users.
Each team member signed up and experienced the current Sharesies onboarding process first-hand — collectively analysing the flow to better understand the product from a user's perspective.
After meeting with Sharesies, we learned there was a new onboarding flow already in development. Testing the new process wasn't an option yet, but we were able to see a demo of the prototype and how it addressed current challenges.
This pivot meant we needed to re-frame our problem — shifting from looking at the onboarding flow itself, to building guidance and coaching into a user's first week in Sharesies after sign-up.
After getting more context and feedback, we narrowed our problem down to focus on two areas: building user confidence and how Sharesies' products can help.
How might we guide or coach users to make them feel confident enough to get started throughout their first week?
How might we guide or coach users to decide which is the right product for them within the first week of signing up?
Users feel confident enough to start using a product within their first week of signing up with Sharesies.
Users are given effective guidance that helps them decide which product suits their needs within the first week of signing up with Sharesies.
With our re-framed problem and clear outcomes in place, the next step was figuring out what we actually needed to learn. That's where research objectives came in — they gave us a focused direction so we weren't just asking questions for the sake of it.
Research objectives are the specific questions a team sets out to answer before jumping into user interviews or testing. They keep the research focused and purposeful — without them, it's easy to collect a lot of data that doesn't actually help you make design decisions. Think of them as a compass: they don't tell you the answer, but they make sure you're looking in the right direction.
The re-framed problem helped guide our research objectives, which aimed to answer the question: what do we need to understand in order to build our solution?
How might we better understand the attitudes and behaviours that users have towards confidence in managing or developing their wealth?
How might we better understand the attitudes and behaviours users have towards their financial goals to help them choose which product suits them best?
Wealth development is about more than just keeping your finances steady — it's moving beyond maintaining a level of financial wellbeing and actively growing it towards financial empowerment. For Sharesies users, this means feeling confident enough to take that next step, whether it's their first investment or choosing the right product for their goals.
With our research objectives locked in, the next step was talking to real people. We identified two participant groups based on their experience with wealth development — and mapped out what we wanted to learn from each.
Who our research participants are and what we want to understand from each group.
Have either not started or have spent less than three months developing their wealth.
Have started and have spent more than three months developing their wealth.
Questions relevant to all participants regardless of their experience level with wealth development.
Now that we knew who we wanted to talk to and what we needed to learn, it was time to actually get out there and have those conversations.
We wanted to speak to people who are new to wealth development, to better understand what their current barriers are to pursuing wealth development and what they might need to feel more confident in managing their wealth.
We also reached out to speak to people who are experienced in wealth development, to better understand how they gained their confidence and knowledge to push past the barriers at the beginning of their journey.
We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine participants. Our participants ranged in age, gender, background, and experience.
Six of the participants were new to wealth development and three were experienced in wealth development.
We each recruited 2–3 participants from a range of professional backgrounds. To get the most out of the interviews, we deliberately interviewed each other's participants rather than our own — the idea being that speaking with someone unfamiliar would create a more natural dynamic and help us build confidence interviewing strangers.
We used affinity mapping to organise and cluster interview notes to identify key findings and insights within our participants' experiences.
Through affinity mapping, we identified shared patterns, behaviours, and attitudes across our interviews. This surfaced 38 individual findings, which we distilled down to 8 key insights — the ones we believed would be most impactful in shaping an ideal onboarding experience.
People who are new to wealth development want customised, continual, and engaging financial guidance that feels human — whether from a real person or a program.
They are drawn to relatable content that comes from others' similar experience, which provides more opportunity for guidance that's suited to the context of their situations and goals.
Participants want continual guidance at pivotal moments in their own financial journey because it helps them feel supported to make decisions in developing their wealth.
Guidance that is more self-directed and combines instruction with meaningful action appears to be the most effective and engaging way for participants to learn.
People new to wealth development are hesitant to leave their current financial routine because they don't feel like they have the knowledge to justify the level of risk they're considering, further holding them back from making the first step.
People don't identify with the term 'wealth management' because they don't see it as something they do or for anyone they're affiliated with. However, we found that they are actively managing their wealth in their behaviours and routines.
There are contradictions in how people view talking about wealth in their social circles. Investing is a more socially accepted topic to discuss with friends while personal finances are treated as a sensitive topic.
This might be because investing is seen as an ambitious pursuit whereas personal finances reveal more about someone's financial wellbeing than they might feel comfortable sharing.
People see the following topics as building blocks to understand wealth development: what an investment is and how it can work for them, what financial risk is, the ways in which current events impact the financial markets, and insight into other people's experiences.
People are focused on immediate and urgent costs before they are able to consider the long-term, non-essential costs. This may be because they don't feel they can invest until they are in a safe place with their financial wellbeing and have covered their essential costs of living.
People who have more experience in investing may have greater discernment on how market conditions and current events could impact their investments because they have learnt from their past investing mistakes, and can apply better judgement going forward.
Analysis of our qualitative research gave us our design principles — the rules we'd use to guide every design decision from here on out.
The design should centre and adapt around the user's wealth development goals, needs, and preferences.
The design should consider diverse user journeys, multiple entry points, and personalised pathways to cater to users' varying needs and preferences.
To create an intuitive, meaningful, and personalised experience that will help increase user satisfaction and user retention.
The design should be clear, approachable, and simple. Each component tries to function or guide to the experience.
Language should be jargon-free, approachable, and empathetic. UI should prioritise a "feeling first" approach using my feelings, aspirance, and ease.
To reduce cognitive load in order to prevent users from experiencing unnecessary complexity, user task friction, and attention fatigue.
The design should bridge the gap between existing resources and the user needs.
The guidance should support users in their journey throughout their wealth development by guiding the user to relevant resources, supportive user task flow, and clear information architecture.
To provide the right information at the right time within the Sharesies app, so that users can feel more confident in navigating wealth development.
The design should foster a community of empowered people practising wealth development.
Provide ways for people to share their experiences and learnings, as well as relate to others' experiences.
Users are drawn to experiences that are personalised, relatable, and feel human.
With our design principles and insights in hand, we started exploring early concepts — sketching out ideas that combined our research findings with gamification principles. These concepts were also designed to build on Sharesies' existing Go-to Guides, a helpful resource already within the platform.
Some early sketches and concepts based on the gamification principles we researched.
Multiple choice quizzes could be used to teach the basics of wealth development to new users while being optional for experienced users so their experience isn't disrupted. If the user gets the answer correct they could be given a celebratory micro-interaction — a fun activity which helps them notice what they've learned and creates a sense of play within the experience.
Progress bars could be used in various moments within the Sharesies experience. For example, when a user is signing up, when they are in the process of making an investment for the first time, or while learning new topic content. They indicate time or effort left to finish the task and give a sense of completion to the user.
Storyboards helped frame particular scenarios for gamification — making abstract concepts more tangible. This included visualising the act of making investments and exploring the possibility of encouraging gambling behaviour. The team used these to test gamification concepts through storytelling before moving to higher fidelity.
Our early concepts pointed us toward a clear direction — building on something Sharesies already had in place.
The relationship between the Go-to Guides and our solution
The Go-to Guides are a helpful resource aimed to help users level up with investing knowledge and our solution will build off of this.
Our final design will aim to deliver this material in an interactive way, giving the user a sense of being coached through their first week with Sharesies to help them get started.
We realise that the existing Go-to Guides only cover the topic of investing, so while we may prototype our solution for Invest, our design principles will be product-agnostic and consider wealth development broadly.
With the concept defined, here's what comes next — consolidating our research, running workshops, and moving into prototyping.
Our next step will be to develop a set of design principles using our key findings and insights from both our primary and secondary research streams. These will guide how we design the solution.
We will be facilitating a workshop with the Sharesies design team to generate early sketches, combine ideas, and prioritise key concepts to take forward.
Alongside our research, we'll do a mapping exercise to compare the content in the Go-to Guides with our participants' profiles according to context. The aim is to identify what content suits and where more content is needed to support users.
Using concepts generated from the workshop, we'll develop and refine ideas into clearer directions for the solution.
Using the concepts generated from the workshop, we'll go through two rounds of prototyping and usability testing before beginning work on the final design. The testing methods will depend on what features and flows are developed — this will inform our testing objectives.
Research doesn't stop at insights. We'll continue validating our assumptions through each iteration, making sure the solution stays grounded in real user needs.
A major milestone in our project was collaborating directly with designers at Sharesies. We facilitated a concepting workshop to bring together our research with their product expertise and generate ideas grounded in both.
We conducted a concepting session with Sharesies to gather ideas based off the design principles.
We facilitated a collaborative workshop with the Sharesies design team, combining our qualitative research analysis and design experience with our problem space to come up with concepts and ideas to work on.
To start, we provided a recap and overview of the work we've done to date to get everyone up to speed and to establish the intended outcomes of the workshop. The second part was made up of the concepting exercises that included generating ideas and converging on the best.
During the workshop, we set out to:
Learnings and main discussion points from the concepting workshop.
Initially our concept was based around the G2G content, however we found that some content was too advanced and didn't fit the direct needs of our target user group.
Going forward, our design will instead be based around the broader Sharesies Learn content — as it includes more foundational information for those new to developing their wealth.
The products offered by Sharesies could form the basis of a pathway to building wealth for users. Our design is currently focused on Invest as the lowest barrier product, but could incorporate pathways between products in the future.
We want users to have the ability to personalise or choose their own path to these products, based on their own specified financial goals.
While the scope of the workshop was limited to Sharesies' Invest product, we intend to design a framework of a system that could be applied to the other key products of KiwiSaver and Save.
As Sharesies' user needs and goals may change over time, the company may want to adapt new innovative features and products to this system in a fluid and adaptable way.
During the workshop, our SHMUXD team and the Sharesies design team ran a Crazy Eights session — rapidly sketching out ideas on paper with everyone bringing their own perspective to the table. Personally, I drew on my gaming experience to explore how game mechanics could translate into an onboarding context. From those individual sketches, we converged on the strongest elements and combined them into one concept.
This concept came from our workshop and combined the strongest elements from three different sketches.
The user can click on a module point to see what topics can be completed in order to progress to the next module. This allows the user to decide whether or not they want to commit to reviewing this topic before starting.
The user is presented with multiple media options: video, short form writing with visualisations, and long form articles to ensure we cover all methods of taking in information, and that the user can select their most preferable method.
The user can access content from the other modules at any point, whether they have already completed them, or have yet to complete the previous module. This is to reduce restriction and allows the user to learn in the direction they desire. It also allows users to refer to content again when they might need to refresh themselves.
Some modules could contain questionnaires where the user provides answers that then offer them customised content, or recommendations on types of investments to explore so that the user's experience feels customised.
Coming Next
