ii Advice

Opportunity

Traditional financial advice is expensive, opaque, and difficult to scale. ii Advice aimed to make financial planning more accessible through a flat fee model, digitise the advisory experience, and maintain trust by preserving meaningful human relationships between customers and advisors.

It’s not just about designing a digital product — it’s about designing a service experience!

My role

As Senior Designer, I supported in the discovery and development of the MVP experience. Led the design across onboarding, advisor interactions, and the customer dashboard, and worked closely with Product, Engineering, and Compliance to balance speed to market with regulatory and user needs while guiding design decisions under tight constraints. UXD Lead Amy Lees collaborated with me on this project.

How might we create a digital-first financial advice experience that users trust, understand and are empowered? 

Lean, Outcome-Focused Delivery

Identified friction points in the existing user journey and architected a more intuitive, logical flow. Led prioritisation workshops with Product stakeholders to scope a viable MVP, balancing user needs with technical feasibility.

MVP Scope

We focused on the minimum viable trust journey that included the Onboarding into financial planning, first advisor interaction via video call, Financial plan delivery with the adviser and Ongoing engagement through the customer dashboard. 

Solution

Onboarding Experience

Problem

Users needed to complete a long, complex financial onboarding form, creating a risk of overwhelm and drop-off.

Evidence‍
 ‍

Consumer Duty testing showed users felt uncertain about the effort required and needed reassurance that their progress would be saved.

Design Decision

I restructured the journey into clear sections with visible progress, reduced cognitive load through progressive disclosure, and introduced save-and-exit functionality to build confidence and control.

Outcome

The experience reduced perceived complexity and improved user confidence in completing onboarding. This was evidenced by further testing.

The majority of users hoped the data was being autosaved, but expressed a lack of confidence confirming it

- UXR reporting

Problem

A fully digital experience risked reducing trust and making financial advice feel impersonal.

Evidence

Users associated financial advice with human relationships and needed reassurance that real expertise and support were available.

Design Decision

Integrated a video call experience directly within the platform, allowing advisors to guide users through their financial plan in context. This ensured advice remained personal, interactive, and grounded in the user’s data.

Outcome

The feature strengthened trust and improved engagement by combining digital convenience with human reassurance.

Problem‍
 ‍

Users needed a clear and central place to manage their financial plan, but information and actions were spread across multiple touchpoints, making it difficult to stay engaged and take the next steps

Evidence‍

Users required ongoing guidance after receiving their financial plan and needed clarity on what to do next.

Design Decision‍
 ‍

I designed a centralised dashboard that brought together key actions and information, including appointment booking, financial plan summaries, task management, document access, and investment visibility. The experience was structured to prioritise next steps and support ongoing engagement, rather than acting as a static information hub.

Outcome‍

The dashboard improved visibility and helped users stay engaged with their financial plan over time.

Validation & Testing

We conducted both moderated and unmoderated usability testing across all key journeys prior to launch, with a strong focus on ensuring users could understand the experience, navigate it confidently, and make clear, informed decisions.



Designed flows to meet FCA Consumer Duty requirements to ensure users can understand key information and make informed decisions.


Accessibility with WCAG AA+ compliance guidelines

Iteration

Through testing, we discovered confusion around appointment states, with users unsure whether their advisor was available to start a call. In response, we iterated on the appointment card design, testing clearer status messaging to better signal availability and next steps.

Key insights

In Nov 2025, ii Advice soft-launched for a restricted number of Interactive Investor’s customers. Met initial customer acquisition targets and established a foundation for scalable advisory service.

As of early 2026, we are still learning what the true customer and business impact that this MVP has delivered.

Iteration & Learning

With our initial target customers coming through all the journeys, we are currently in the process of analysing real user behaviour across journeys through Contentsquare and partnering with customer support to identify friction.

Key Learnings

• Customers need to build trust in our team to then build trust in our product in financial services

• MVP should prioritise risk, not just features. Regulatory constraints can strengthen design decisions

• Earlier investment in user segmentation (e.g. financial confidence levels) would enable more personalised and adaptive journeys post-MVP.