CASE STUDY
DISCOVER MONEY TOOLS
Over 60% of Discover customers wanted budgeting and cash flow tools but lacked personalized guidance. As lead experience designer and strategist I shaped a financial wellness suite built on Personetics.
CLIENT
Discover Financial Services
YEAR
[ADD YEAR]
ROLE
Lead Experience Designer & Strategist
TOOLS
Figma · InDesign · Miro
DELIVERABLES
Landing & onboarding · Dashboard · Insights Inbox · Budgeting · Spending trends
THE SITUATION
Many Discover customers struggled with the fundamentals of financial health: budgeting, tracking expenses, and spotting unnecessary spending. The research was unambiguous. Over 60% of customers expressed interest in tools for cash flow management, budgeting, and savings goals, and most were relying on bank-provided basics or self-made spreadsheets without any personalized guidance. Discover set out to modernize its offering with a free financial wellness service that would help customers take control of their money and deepen engagement with the brand.
THE BRIEF
Our team was tasked with designing the onboarding experience and product interface for a new insights and budgeting tool built on Personetics, a third-party partner supplying white-label financial intelligence. The service had to be easily reachable from Account Center Home and deliver an intuitive, customizable dashboard: real-time insights refreshed daily, spending trends, and actionable recommendations such as flagging duplicate subscriptions or nudging a budget into place.
FIG 1 · The Money Tools dashboard and insight surfaces
THE GAP I FOUND
The original plan gave users exactly one path into the service: a tile on Account Center Home. The tile carried no context and did nothing to communicate what the service was or why it was worth opting into. I identified that users needed a stronger value proposition and clearer messaging before they would hand a tool their financial picture, and made the landing page the critical touchpoint: a comprehensive, persuasive introduction to the service rather than a doorway with no sign on it. The redesigned landing experience significantly improved both user understanding and opt-in rates.
THE SUITE
Through in-person workshops and direct collaboration with stakeholders, we designed a set of tools that deliver daily-updated guidance based on each user’s actual spending and saving behavior:
Personalized dashboard.
A customizable home for all insights, budgets, and tools in one place, arranged around what each user cares about.
Insights Inbox.
A centralized feed for alerts, notifications, and essential updates, built so users can act immediately rather than file things away.
Budgeting tool.
Category-level budget setting and tracking that meets users where their money actually goes.
Spending trends.
Pattern analysis that surfaces where money leaks, so smarter decisions come from evidence instead of guilt.
WHAT THIS DEMONSTRATES
Strategy and craft in the same seat. The measurable win came from an experience-strategy decision, treating the landing moment as the product’s first feature, and the daily-use value came from disciplined interface design on top of a partner platform. Designing on white-label infrastructure is its own skill: the constraint is real, and the experience still has to feel like it belongs to the brand and to the user.
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