Building Financial Wellness
Candidly is a financial wellness and technology platform that helps people manage student debt and build wealth. They partner with employers to offer a benefit program that equips employees with tools to plan and pay for college, reduce student loan debt, and start saving for the future. My team was brought on to design the onboarding experience and dashboard for their platform.
Challenge
Student debt is one of the biggest barriers to financial wellness in the workforce: 84% of people with student debt cite it as the top reason they aren't participating in retirement savings, and over a third of the workforce is currently planning for or paying off college. Education needs to be planned for and managed within the context of a person's full financial picture, but the existing system makes that hard. Finding and understanding student debt solutions is confusing on its own, let alone connecting that process to someone's broader financial goals.
Solution
My team worked closely with product management and engineering to build a product that enables simultaneous progress on debt paydown and financial wellness.
We kicked off the project by creating an interactive journey map to understand the user’s needs of the platform and align the team around how to address them. From there, I designed the onboarding experience, guiding users through the process while surfacing recommended plans and actions tailored to their situation. I then led design of the dashboard, testing two concepts, both of which performed well with users.
Results
We launched a modern, easy to use onboarding experience and dashboard that made adopting the platform simple and informative. Over time, employees make measurable progress toward stability, security, and wealth, while employers gain engagement, retention, and recruitment benefits in return. The platform's impact has been recognized with the "Best Student Loan Management Platform" designation at the FinTech Breakthrough Awards program.
Interactive Journey Map
Preview of the Onboarding Experience
Sample Dashboard Concepts, User Tested
