Genius Wallet

For Onpoint Global - In collaboration with the UX/UI Team

Genius Wallet is a comprehensive financial advice platform designed to assist users in managing their finances more effectively.

Identifying the Challenge

Onpoint Global identified a market gap for advertisers seeking to present their financial offers in a way that is both engaging and easy for users to understand.

The hypothesis was that many people tend to ignore these offers because they find financial topics confusing or hard to grasp. This made it difficult for advertisers to connect effectively with their target audience.

With limited information available and tight time constraints, the product team needed to move quickly and efficiently to develop a solution.

The Users

Once we had a clear understanding of the problem, our next step was to identify who we were designing for. The only initial requirement we had was to show users financial ads, but to create a valuable experience, we needed to ensure we were showing the right content to the right people. Our goal was to balance business objectives with genuine user needs by identifying users who were not only open to financial offers, but who might actually benefit from them.

Based on the project goals and context, we developed an initial assumption-based user profile:

Adults in the U.S.
Ages 18 to 45.
May avoid or struggle with credit cards, loans, or saving habits.

This early user profile helped us guide our initial research efforts and set the foundation for exploring real user behaviors, needs, and motivations.

Empathizing Under Constraints

The next step in our process was to empathize with our users. However, due to time constraints and limited resources, conducting in-depth interviews or primary user research wasn’t feasible. Instead, we turned to reliable secondary sources to better understand our users’ financial struggles and behaviors.

We focused primarily on findings from the FINRA National Financial Capability Study, which provided rich insights into financial literacy and habits among U.S. citizens. This research helped us build empathy and identify meaningful pain points to inform our design decisions.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Low financial literacy

Many U.S. adults, especially younger ones, struggle to understand basic financial concepts, leading to confusion and poor decision-making around money.

Difficulty with credit and loans

People often find credit cards and loan options overwhelming, with little clarity on terms, repayment, and long-term impact.

Most affected groups

Young adults, people with lower income or education, and underrepresented minorities face the biggest financial challenges.

Low trust in institutions

Instead of banks or financial advisors, users often turn to Google, YouTube, or friends for help, sometimes getting unreliable information.

User Personas

Based on the insights from secondary research, I created two user personas to visually represent the key audiences we were designing for. These personas helped align the team around user needs and behaviors, showcasing typical users with low financial literacy.

Their main frustrations included:

Confusion around financial terms.
Fear of making mistakes.
Lack of trustworthy resources.
Struggle to save money for financial goals.

Competitive Analysis

Once we understood our users, we needed to define the challenge. We reviewed several ad-supported financial platforms targeting similar audiences, focusing on their key features, tone and copy, usability, and ad placement strategies. This comparison helped identify best practices and areas for improvement when presenting economic information as well as ideas on how to incorporates financial offers effectively.

Designing the Solution

Genius Wallet was proposed to address these challenges by creating a friendly, intuitive website that meets the users in need of comprehensive financial advice combining relevant targeted offers.

What

A reliable and friendly financial advice website that simplifies complex concepts, integrating targeted related offers.

Who

Individuals who need accessible financial advice but often find financial concepts confusing or overwhelming.

When/Where

Website

Ideation

To define the right features, we collaborated closely with the content team and the rest of the UX/UI team through a series of brainstorming sessions. Together, we reviewed competitor platforms and analyzed how they addressed similar challenges. By combining our research insights with these new ideas, we identified a set of key features aimed at tackling the users' main frustrations.

Friendly character (Wallit) to chat with

An AI-powered assistant that helps users find the information they need through a conversational experience. Wallit also suggests personalized offers related to each topic. This feature aims to reduce the frustration users often feel when dealing with complex financial subjects.

Verified Sources and Author Profiles

All content includes clearly cited sources and visible author profiles to build credibility and trust, especially important for users who are skeptical or unfamiliar with financial information.

Debt repayment calculator

An interactive tool that helps users explore strategies for paying down debt and saving for personal goals. This feature is especially valuable for users struggling with managing existing debt.

Clear separated sections

Financial topics are divided into well-structured, distinct sections to improve clarity and comprehension. This helps reduce cognitive overload and confusion.

Charts and other visual elements:

Complex financial concepts are explained using visuals like charts, infographics, and illustrations. These support users with low financial literacy in understanding key ideas quickly and easily.

Information Architecture

In collaboration with the content team, we conducted in-depth research to identify the most relevant financial topics and user needs. This research guided our selection of key sections, ensuring that users could easily access financial advice and tools while interacting seamlessly with the platform. By mapping out the user journey, we structured the sitemap to align with user expectations, providing a clear and intuitive flow through the site's features. This careful planning aimed to enhance both the educational and advertising aspects of the experience.

Prototyping

Throughout the prototyping phase, I developed detailed wireframes that mapped the primary user interactions as well as previews of the more relevant sections of the website.

After crafting these wireframes, we iterated them with stakeholders and possible advertisement partners, ensuring that feedback was addressed at each stage. The process underwent several rounds of adjustments to fine-tune the user journey, refining the overall structure until we reached a final version.

The Visual Design Process

Once the wireframes were finalized, the focus shifted to developing a vibrant, dynamic, and approachable visual identity tailored to a younger audience. We began by creating a mood board inspired by visually appealing competitors we had previously benchmarked.

The UX/UI team then proposed three distinct visual directions for the platform. After internal reviews and feedback sessions, one direction was selected to move forward with.

From there, I developed the style guide, starting with the color palette. I chose a bright green as the primary color to symbolize financial growth and trust, creating an immediate association with the financial sector. I then defined the rest of the visual elements, including iconography, typography, and imagery. These components were applied consistently across the design to ensure a cohesive and polished look throughout the product.

Final Designs & Prototypes

With the visual identity and style guide defined, I moved on to creating the high-fidelity prototypes. Since our target audience actively used both mobile and desktop platforms, we focused on designing for both experiences. These screens brought together all the previous work into an interactive product that clearly reflected the brand’s personality.

The goal was to visually communicate the usability of each feature while showcasing the final look and feel. I focused on making the interface clean, approachable, and easy to navigate, incorporating microinteractions to ensure the experience felt both intuitive and engaging. The prototypes were shared with stakeholders and iterated based on their feedback until we reached the final designs.

Implementation

We reviewed the visual results with the product manager and development team to assess how the proposed solutions could be implemented within the available timeline.

Given the tight deadline, we agreed on creating an MVP by stripping out some of the more complex features for the initial launch. We also established a development roadmap, outlining the effort and timing needed to bring the full product to life.

Impact & Iteration

Once the product was live, we launched the first iteration and began tracking its performance using ad engagement metrics. These early insights allowed us to make small, targeted iterations as we continued rolling out the remaining features. This incremental approach helped us refine the experience and ensure the product stayed aligned with our original goal of making financial content more accessible and user-friendly.

Conclusion & Reflections

Creating Genius Wallet was both a challenging and rewarding experience. Working with limited information, tight deadlines, and fixed business requirements pushed me to adapt the Design Thinking process into something more agile and feasible.

The project demanded strong collaboration between design, product, and development teams. Despite the constraints, we aligned around a shared goal and built a functional, engaging product. This experience helped me grow as a designer, teaching me how to be more flexible, value clear communication, and find creative solutions even when ideal conditions aren’t available.