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Transform Offline Friction into Online Flow

Drove $2.05M in new investments in 4 months by streamlining stock account opening for younger investors.

Context

Problem

Research

Goals

Design for Time

Design for Magic

Impact

Conclusion

Intro

After 35 years offline, Good Finance Securities launched its first digital stock account portal to win back users lost to online-first competitors during the pandemic. With 200,000 accounts and $4.6B in assets, the goal was to attract younger investors through a modern onboarding experience.

Although market account openings increased from 2018 to 2021, the company’s market size declined after peaking, indicating it was losing share despite overall growth.

App Store

Google Play

Project Type

App Design (iOS, Android, In-App Web)

Timeline

Mar 2023 - Feb 2024

Team

Product Team:

1 UX Designer (Me)

1 UX Researcher

1 Product Manager

1 Scrum Master

Engineer Team:

2 Mobile (iOS)

2 Mobile (Android)

2 Web

3 Backend

2 Quality Assurance

1 Data

Other Teams:

1 Security

1 Legal

1 Operations

2 Marketing

Contractors - Taku Bannai.

What I Did

Designed regulatory-compliant solutions with Legal and Operations, removing redundant fields by balancing compliance and UX.
Collaborated with PM and Backend Engineer to improve password creation beyond system limitations for better UX and security.
Led design documentation for alignment and efficient developing handoff.
Conducted 7 usability tests with User Researcher to improve experience.
Ensured quality through checks with QA engineers and streamlined design documentation for handoff.

Team

Engineer Team:

2 Mobile (iOS)

2 Mobile (Android)

2 Web

3 Backend

2 Quality Assurance

1 Data

Other Teams:

2 Marketing

1 Security

1 Legal

1 Operations

Contractors - Taku Bannai.

Product Team:

1 UX Designer (Me)

1 UX Researcher

1 Product Manager

1 Scrum Master

Timeline

Mar 2023 - Feb 2024

Project Type

App Design (iOS, Android, In-App Web)

What I did

Designed user flows, interaction designs, high-fidelity prototypes, and app illustrations/animations for user guidance.
Led design documentation with PM and Senior UX Designer for cross-functional alignment and efficient handoff.
Collaborated with cross-functional teams and conducted usability tests to improve experience.
Ensured quality through checks with QA engineers and streamlined design documentation for handoff.

Impact Summary

📈 96.6%

Increase in Total Account Opening*

💰 $2.05 million

Increased Asset Under Management (USD)

⏰ 9.33%

Faster than market average**

* Compared same period (March to June in 2023 and 2024) before and after implementing the online stock account opening.

** Account opening time was 13.6 minutes, faster than the market time which was 15 minutes.

Problem

"New-Gen Investors Won’t Open Accounts if it Takes Too Long"

To combat this decline, the company focused on simplifying the onboarding process and delivering a seamless, mobile-first experience tailored to tech-savvy retail investors.

Target User: New-Gen Investors

Demographics

Tech-savvy retail stock investors with 0-3 years of experience.

Motivations

Seek quick, seamless, and secure stock market entry.

Pain Points

Prefer mobile-first experiences but are impatient with long onboarding processes.

The Problems

No Online Funnel

The outdated offline account opening took 2 hours, required 40+ pages, and 5+ repetitive signatures—making it lengthy and inefficient.

Fragmented Journey

Fragmented backend systems from different vendors led to a disjointed user journey—users had to set a password in one app and log into another to start investing.

User Research

60% of Users Drop Off if Onboarding Takes Over 5 Minutes

Time perception matters. 68% of consumers, and 75% of those aged 25~34 abandon online financial applications when the process feels too long (Bank Director, 2022).

Methodology:

🥊

Competitor Analysis

Researched the top 4 stock exchanges by market cap and 2 emerging brokerage apps.

👀

Contextual Inquiry

Interviewed 4 target customers through contextual inquiry to understand behaviors and pain points.

Most competitor's processes take 15–30 minutes.

I researched the top four stock exchanges by market cap along with two emerging brokerage apps to analyze their onboarding flows, identify friction points, and understand what contributes to their completion times.

User Pain Points: Effort and Uncertainty

Through contextual interviews with 4 users, I identified these insights:

1.

It’s Not About Speed, It’s About Effort.

Users aren’t just frustrated by how long it takes, but also by unnecessary fields. Removing redundancies speeds up the process and helps them finish with cognitive ease.

2.

It’s Not About Time, It’s About Certainty.

Frustration comes from unclear steps, not duration. Clear progress tracking and seamless, interactive flows ease user uncertainty and reduce perceived effort.

Photo of team conducting field research.

Goals

Market Share Fell from 0.3% to 0.17% Due to Offline-Only Account Opening.

Market share fell from 0.3% to 0.17% due to the lack of digital onboarding. As competitors moved online during the pandemic, this gap made transformation urgent.

⏰

Beat Market Time

Develop an online account opening based on the offline application, to help retail stock investors open a stock account within the market average time of 15 mins.

📈

Drive User Acquisition

Target the opening of 10,000 accounts within a year to boost user acquisition and market share.

Principles

What Are the Principles?

❌ Should not:

Copy & paste offline services into the digital space.

✅ Should:

Respect users’ time & avoid unnecessary financial jargon.

Disclosure: I am a Kendrick Lamar fan.

Design for Time

Designing for Every Second That Matters

Analyze & Organize

Streamline Input Questions

I collaborated with legal and operations teams to analyze competitor forms, identifying and removing irrelevant questions to streamline the account opening process.

This resulted in:

✅ Cutting 20% of unnecessary questions
✅ Reducing time by 1 minute

Resolving Stakeholder Tensions

Balancing legal & operation team's needs with user-centered design

Including and removing input fields was more challenging than expected!

For example, legal & operations teams required postal code and phone number fields, which supported internal needs but risked cluttering the interface and adding user friction.

👩🏻‍⚖️

From the legal & operations team's perspective:

They wanted postal codes for compliance and extra phone numbers to increase contact options.

🙋🏻‍♂️

From a UX perspective:

Having users enter postal codes adds unnecessary effort and goes against Cognitive Load Minimization.

I came up with two solutions:

Postal Code Handling: Auto-detecting postal codes from address inputs and sending them directly to the internal CRM, similar to not asking for age when a birthdate is provided while still supporting legal compliance and operational access.
Optional Field Reduction: Removed optional inputs to avoid overwhelming users, as they were rarely completed in offline account openings.

Result:

✅ A decluttered, user-friendly flow that maintained compliance and operational requirements after stakeholder alignment.

Progress Bar

Reducing the Feeling of Uncertainty

One step in the process took longer than others, causing users to feel frustrated, leading to 38% drop off during longer steps.

I iterated on progress bar designs to reduce user uncertainty and frustration, helping users see their progress, know how much is left, and feel reassured for a more seamless experience.

The progress bar provided a clear sense of progress, setting expectations and reducing user frustration:

✅ Resulting in an 8% increase in completion rates.

Thoughtful Designs

Small Designs, Big Impact

To reduce user input errors, the email input automatically completes the address when typing ‘@’. Additionally, placing the OTP code at the top of the email allows users to view it directly in the notification without leaving the app.

✅ Decreasing errors by minimizing typing mistakes

✅ Average total time saved: 20-30 seconds

Design for Magic

Redefining Market Standards - The ‘Magic link’

The Big Challenge

How Can We…

…Guide the user from one app to the other to finish the password setup?
…Provide a more simpler way to set up a password, but in line with the regulations?

Guide the user from one app to the other to finish the password setup?
Provide a more simpler way to set up a password, but in line with the regulations?

Context of this Challenge

Traditional Way of Doing Things

The current market process for setting up stock account passwords is secure but inconvenient for users:

Strict SEC regulations require secure delivery of strong, randomized passwords with proper identity verification and record-keeping.

Flow Iterations

Iterating with Cross-Functional Teams

I collaborated with backend engineers, operations, security, and legal teams to solve this, exploring 3 approaches to make the final password setup intuitive while considering restrictions and development time.

✅ Pros: No need to develop new pages so faster to develop.
🔥 Cons: Users found the Blue app’s forget password page confusing and untrustworthy due to poor UI, and copying the randomized password added to the confusion.

✅Pros: Operate password change in White app with more control of how to guide users.
🔥Cons: Although the email provided guidance, users found copying the randomized password to reset their own password inconvenient. Connecting the Blue app’s in-app browser to handle password protocols in the White app required additional coding time.

✅ Pros: A tokenized link allows users to securely bypass manual entry of randomized passwords, ensuring seamless access and regulatory compliance, while a familiar app UI enhances trust and provides customizable, clear guidance for password setup.
🔥 Cons: Technical barrier must be evaluated for encrypted tokenized link, thus will take longer development time.

Final Solution

The 'Magic Link'

The tokenized link method replaces traditional passwords, meets regulatory requirements, and enhances the seamless experience between the company’s apps, showcasing that good UX combines frontend design, backend technology, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Usability Testing

Clarifying Financial Jargon for Real Users

I worked with user researchers on 7 usability tests to refine financial terms in the account opening process for clarity and ease of understanding. I then created a list of unclear and easily misunderstood terminology and collaborated with the marketing & legal team to simplify and further explain the language for users.

Impact

A New Chapter for a 35-Year-Old Company

📈 96.6%

Increase in Total Account Opening*

💰 $2.05 million

Increased Asset Under Management (USD)

⏰ 9.33%

Faster than market average**

* Compared same period (March to June in 2023 and 2024) before and after implementing the online stock account opening.

** Account opening time was 13.6 minutes, faster than the market time which was 15 minutes.

Lesson Learned

Lessons in Design and Collaboration

Understand The Code Behind The Design:

Understanding the underlying code is essential. Grasping technical aspects enables effective collaboration with developers and ensures my design decisions are implementable.

Rethink How To Implement Good User Experience:

Solving user problems are not limited to using Figma to design amazing UI's, it can also be about implementing technologies beyond the frames.

Careful Documentation Helps With Collaboration:

Document, Document, Document! This allows better team communication, ensures stakeholder alignment, and reduces uncertainty and mistakes.

Special Thanks

First Major Project: A Cross-Disciplinary Journey

Collaborating with a diverse team on a major project deepened my understanding of the project lifecycle and design documentation, enhanced my cross-department collaboration skills, and I am super grateful for the team’s support and teachings!

Next Project

Toys to Stories: Bilingual Learning Through Play Time Storytelling

Empower bilingual families in supporting their children’s early bilingual language development through turning toys into interactive storytelling.

In the U.S., over 21% of households speak a language other than English, yet many bilingual parents struggle to maintain their child’s heritage language. Toys to Stories turns everyday toys into interactive bilingual companions, making it easy for busy parents to support language learning through playful, personalized stories.

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EXPLORE

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