Vanguard
Financial Dashboard
Role:
Product Lead
Company:
Partnership with Vanguard UXR
Tools:
Figma, Adobe, Kardsort.com
OVERVIEW
Vanguard's Digital Advisor was targeted towards emerging investors but struggled with retainment and usage. A baseline usability study confirmed it: participants completed fewer than half of core tasks, with failures clustering around risk configuration, goal-setting, and finding help.
Over four months, I led research and redesign to close that gap, moving task completion on the two highest-friction flows from 50% to 100%. This greatly improves product outlook, as well as customer-relations, ensuring long-term engagement from customers.
PROCESS
I structured the study across five phases:
Baseline usability test against the existing Vanguard prototype and identify current issues.
Card sort and user interviews to diagnose navigation failures and explore additional functionalities.
Full redesign implementing changes observed in research.
Second round of usability testing to validate improvements, observing delta change in user metrics.
QUANTITATIVE
Navigation tasks (risk, goals, and taxes) took approximately one minute longer on average in round one, with risk settings and tax location each reaching only 50% task completion.
After redesign, both flows reached 100% completion and navigation time reduced substantially. 100% of round-two participants expressed approval with comprehension and descriptions across all tested features.
QUALITATIVE
Main Observation: The current UI assumes further knowledge of investing than the average target user has.
Financial jargon, unclear outcomes, and confusing visualizations created a perceived expertise barrier that caused users to hesitate, lowering confidence and trust in Vanguard's Digital Advisor.
NAVIGATION
Finding: 66% of participants struggled to locate features. The card sort revealed this was primarily a terminology failure, not an organizational one.
Decision: Navigation was rebuilt around users flows, not Vanguard's product structure. Includes renaming labels, reordering sections, and consolidating portfolio content into a single dashboard view.
Validated: 100% of round-two participants located all features on first attempt.
PROTOTYPES
The redesign addressed three documented failure points:
Consequence-based framing replaced abstract risk language
Navigation labels were renamed to match user mental models
Help was repositioned as a persistent product feature rather than a buried support link.
Every design decision maps directly research findings.
REFLECTION
I had the opportunity to not only lead a redesign, but pilot several key features like an AI-powered recommendations feature as well as educational tips and resources.
Next steps would include a roll out using A/B testing, as well as continually tracking metrics like retention, customer satisfaction, and usage metrics.