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Enrich Financial Investment

How a usability study became a strategic turning point

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That's me!

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Enrich, a pre-seed fintech startup based in San Francisco, helps users make confident, informed decisions about long-term investing through personalized financial tools and AI guidance. In preparation for their beta launch and funding round, they partnered with Upper Studio, where I led strategic research to surface usability risks, shape product direction, and guide cross-functional decision-making.

Project Type

Usability Study

Timeline

Jan - March 2024

UpperStudio Team

  • Senior Researcher (Me)

  • UX Researcher

  • 2 UX Designers

Client Team

  • 1 Product Manager

  • 1 Lead Designer

  • 3 Engineers

  • 1 UX Copywriter

My Responsibilities

  • Led research study design, execution, and synthesis

  • Delivered prioritized product recs and user insights

  • Drove strategic alignment by facilitating weekly working sessions with the CEO, PM, and Design Lead

  • Mentored and coached Upper Studio team members, providing guidance on research rigor, client communication, and delivery strategy

How did we get here?

During graduate school, I formed an independent study with three other students looking to find more hands-on experiences. We reached out to businesses, secured a faculty advisor, and quickly connected with Enrich.

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We agreed to execute a usability study on five key mobile flows, but it soon became clear deeper research and product strategy questions needed to be answered. This project would help quickly build upon previous generative research as Enrich designed mid-to-high fidelity prototypes, while also collecting insights on product market fit. 

 

Key Outcomes:

  • De-risked beta launch by identifying critical usability issues in core flows.

  • Refocused product roadmap around high-value 'What-If' scenarios.

  • Secured ongoing client partnership.

  • Catalyzed launch of Upper Studio LLC.

Client Needs

I lead discovering and scoping meetings with Enrich and wrote a project brief. This early alignment on project needs, goals, and execution timeline quickly brought our team up to speed and aligned with stakeholders. We uncovered the following critical gaps requiring usability evaluation:​

  • Core user flows had not been tested with users

  • Users' familiarity with advanced financial strategies and terms was an unknown, making it hard to design confidently.

  • Core features were untested and built with many assumptions, Product was uncertain how users would interpret, trust, or interact with them.

  • No prior usability testing had been conducted—critical UX questions remained unanswered.

Project brief written with the client PM and Lead Designer to align on goals, deliverables, and timeline

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Research Goals

To evaluate Enrich’s core user experience at mid–high fidelity, ensuring key features met user expectations while uncovering usability gaps, guiding future iterations, and informing a confident path toward beta launch.

Design goals

  • Ensure that all features and interactions align with user needs and expectations

  • Identify friction points and areas of improvement

  • Establish baseline understanding of target user’s evaluation of product’s key user flows

  • Collect data on user preferences and testimonials to guide future design iterations

  • Define scope for supporting future research (i.e. A/B Testing)

Business Goals

  • Explore what drives user trust and confidence in digital financial tools

  • Deliver timely, actionable recommendations to support the beta roadmap

  • Validate critical assumptions early to reduce risk and prevent costly redesigns

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Timeline was extended in the first phase to afford the client design team time to finish mockups for testing

Approach

With the beta launch approaching, we had to quickly identify the most critical points of friction across five core mobile flows. From the outset, we saw the biggest risk wasn’t surface-level usability—it was the level of assumed financial knowledge embedded in the experience. If users didn’t understand what actions they were taking or why, confidence and trust would erode.

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For the client, we began with a heuristic evaluation to flag high-impact, low-effort improvements and clarify scope. We reviewed internal documentation to align on business goals and flow-level priorities, focusing on “Make a Contribution,” “Rebalance Assets,” and “Explore What-Ifs.”

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For users, we conducted a series of moderated usability sessions to observe how first-time investors interpreted language, layout, and interactions. We paid particular attention to moments of confusion, hesitation, or misinterpretation—signals that pointed to deeper design and communication gaps.

Following testing, we led a synthesis workshop with stakeholders across product, design, and leadership. Together, we mapped usability risks to product priorities and aligned on near-term design changes ahead of the beta launch.

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Creating Clarity while Building a Foundation

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We reframed the usability study as a strategic stress test of Enrich’s product foundation—focusing not just on task completion, but on how well the experience communicated value, built trust, and delivered on the product’s core promise.

I led a session mapping decision points and moments of interpretation across key flows to understand how the product structure supported—or undermined—user understanding. What we uncovered would later shape Enrich’s roadmap and sharpen its focus as it moved toward beta.

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Flow Mapping / Scripts

I annotated user goals, actions, and top research questions for each screen and flow

Clarifying designs

Without a site map or clear pagination, I wrote scripts to map each screen-to-screen transition and clarify how the questions and flows connected. Our team then reconstructed the full user journeys to make sense of the product’s structure.

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Prototype

After finalizing the scripts and piecing together the flows, the Upper Studio designers created a fully interactive prototype

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I planned and led the CEO, PM, Lead Designer, and SWEs through a synthesis workshop after my team had finished affinity mapping and prioritizing findings internally.

Stakeholders and Research

Why do this?

Build alignment and investment in usability findings that will shape next steps

Fold cross-functional teams into direct contact with user insights, fostering shared understanding and collaborative decision-making grounded in real user needs

Surface stakeholder pushback ahead of final deliverable

Findings

Our research uncovered usability breakdowns, gaps in user trust, and opportunities to clarify Enrich's product value:

  • Identified major usability breakdowns including: slider inputs for money amounts and navigation within asset allocation.

  • SUS and PMF scores provided benchmarks for internal team and future testing.

  • Verified "What-If" Scenario Builder as a key driver of product-market fit but also a source of UI confusion.

Punch List

We Indentified 120+ user insights organized by priority, task, theme and recommendation on how to adrress it. 

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Priortization Informing Beta Launch

I created 2x2 Matrix with stakeholders in design and product to vizualize usability issues by severity and impact

Applied Learnings to Mocks

A set of mockups and design changes apply recommendations for the client to scale and model work after

Impact

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Redefining Beta Roadmap & Strategy

We introduced significant changes to Enrich’s understanding of its core value proposition and the user decisions most critical to product trust. These shifts ranged from redesigned flows to refined product strategy. In short, the work led to:

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  • Redesigned the contribution and asset allocation flows after uncovering key usability failures that blocked task completion and eroded user trust

  • Validated “What-If” scenario planning as Enrich’s most differentiating feature, helping leadership prioritize it as a core product pillar

  • Refocused the product roadmap for 1H 2025 to emphasize clarity, confidence, and scenario modeling for first-time investors

  • Secured a continued client engagement by delivering insights that directly shaped the beta launch strategy and product focus

Launching UpperStudio

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Since the end of this project I launched a design company with fellow members of MHCI+D. Enrich has brought us back for 4 projects (and counting!) including launching their financial app, conducting Beta testing, refining onboarding, and leading additional generative and evaluative research.

 

In my role, I have:

  • Led day-to-day operations and strategic direction for UpperStudio

  • Grown the business to support multiple concurrent client engagements

  • Negotiated contracts with C-suite and product leaders, balancing business and design priorities

  • Influenced product roadmaps across both new and existing initiatives

  • Managed and mentored a team of four, shaping projects to support their professional growth

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