Amex Financial Wellness Solution for Digital Wallet Users
PROJECT TYPE
Add a feature
TIMELINE
INDUSTRY
Finance
Jan - Apr 2024
INTRODUCTION
About
American Express offers a strong mobile banking experience, but fintech disruptors are setting new standards for speed, convenience, and personalization. This case study explores an innovative Amex feature designed to align with evolving user needs and expectations.
The Problem
For Millennials and Gen Z, fintech apps represent financial freedom. However, frictionless spending often leads to impulse purchases, lack of visibility, and financial stress.
My Role & Approach
As the sole UX designer, I led the entire design process—defining the problem, crafting user-centered solutions, and developing high-fidelity prototypes. My approach included:
Industry research
User interviews
Personas
Rapid brainstorming sessions
Wireframing
Usability testing
How Might We… empower young adults to adopt effective management strategies while fostering a sense of freedom?
DISCOVER
User Interviews
As part of the Discovery stage, I interviewed both Gen Z and Millennials to understand how they manage their finances, their spending behaviors, pain points and needs.
APPROACH
Style
In-person; remote.
Number
5 participants.
Duration
Age
30 minutes each.
24-30 years-old.
QUESTION STRATEGY
I divided questions into 3 sections:
01. Daily spending habits.
02. Current management strategy.
03. Financial independence obstacles.
GOALS
01. Understand spending habits and behaviors.
02. Detect needs, pain points and opportunities.
03. Understand they manage their finances.
04. Identify factors affecting spending habits.
Interview Results
By visualizing feedback patterns, I identified the key issues to address and used them to guide the design direction.
I compiled interview insights into an affinity map to identify common patterns in behavior, needs and pain points. Despite the age gap, both generations shared similar experiences with financial independence:
Affinity Map
Key Findings
01. They want help managing their money but prefer not to download extra apps.
02. They struggle to achieve their goals because of an ineffective strategy.
03. They use mental math for budgeting, only having a rough estimate of their finances.
04. They exceed mental budget from impulse buying and easy digital wallet use.
The Problem
Digital wallet and fintech apps are rapidly changing the way we spend on a daily basis. Today, Gen Z and Millennial are facing this situation:
Impulse Spending
Access to money digitally makes it easier to overspend without realizing.
Fragmented Oversight
Juggling multiple financial apps makes it difficult to get the full picture of their cash flow.
Financial Stress
Lack of clarity leads to constant anxiety and an inability to reach financial goals.
Based on research insights, I developed a unified user persona and empathy map to identify critical needs and pain points. This will be my guide in brainstorming potential features that meet users’ goals.
My goal was to understand their emotions, frustrations, and motivations. While the user persona gave a broad overview of the target audience, I used an empathy map to gain deeper insights into how they think, feel, and act when it comes to financial management.
Core Pain Points
Mapping User Motivations
Core Needs
Synthesizing Research Findings
DEFINE
The Solution
A customizable financial goal planner embedded in the Amex app, giving users the ability to set realistic financial goals, track their progress and gain insights into their spending habits—ensuring they stay on track without disrupting their lifestyle.
02. Narrowing the Focus
I evaluated the ideas against "How Might We" questions, user and business goals, helping me pinpoint the most user-aligned idea within the constraints.
After analyzing the ideas, I narrowed down the focus to 3 potential features.
Brainstorming Opportunities
How might we… help young adults, who are relatively new to supporting themselves, build sustainable habits so they can achieve their goals without sacrificing their current lifestyle?
01. Rapid Idea Generation
I held a 15-minute brainstorming session with the goal to generate creative solutions that align with the defined problem and design constraints.
This fast-paced approach generated a variety of potential directions, blending practicality with innovative thinking.
03. Financial Goal Tracker
I chose feature option 1 for the design direction because it was the most user-centered idea that also aligns with the business goals.
Once I chose a feature to propose, I created a MVP feature set that prioritizes the essential elements needed for first launch, while also highlighting opportunities for future enhancements.
IDEATE
Income input screen
Home screen
Expense input screen
Goal input - empty
Onboarding screen
Success screen
User Flow
After the proposed feature was approved, I moved on to exploring how it would fit into the Amex app, how users would interact with the feature and started sketching the layout.
Home screen
Goal input - filled
Sketches
After establishing the user flow, I quickly sketched layout concepts to set a foundation for low fidelity wireframes to use to conduct early usability tests.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
DEVELOP
Usability Test
The goal of this test was to ensure users could easily navigate the financial goal planning flow and gather insights to refine the design. I focused on identifying usability issues, validating the concept and assessing the information hierarchy of key screens.
Objectives
Evaluate if users can find and initiate the process of setting up a financial goal plan.
Pass / Fail
Evaluate if users understand the income and expense information structure and categorization.
Evaluate if users can intuitively and successfully adds a new financial goal.
5/5
1/5
4/5
APPROACH
Style
In-person; moderated.
Duration
30 minutes each.
Number
5 participants.
Age
24-30.
Measurable Results
Participants locate the "Plan Financial Goals" CTA without hesitation or incorrect clicks.
Participants understand recurring cash flow is auto-added & inconsistent needs manual adding.
Participants complete goal input without needing assistance or confusion.
VALIDATE
User Insights
While participants completed the task successfully, validating the concept’s potential, their feedback revealed challenges with the information structure, revealing opportunities to enhance the overall user experience.
High Cognitive Load
Needs visual displays to quickly grasp financial state.
Poor Hierarchy
Difficulty tracking monthly cash flow and poor organization.
Limited Personalization
Needs ability to customize cash flow to align goals to lifestyle.
01. Income & Expense Screens
Version 1
Version 2
User Insight
“It’s hard to get the patterns from just a list of numbers. A graph showing monthly variations would be way more helpful and engaging.”
Data Visualization
Added option to view cash flow as a graph, enhancing users’ ability to understand their monthly financial state at a glance.
Customization Capabilities
Users can manually edit income(s) and expense(s), increasing accurate goal planning depending on budgeting preferences.
Value of Changes
Iterations gives users more control and a flexible way to manage finances, boosting confidence and satisfaction in the planning process.
ITERATIONS
02. Goal Input Screen
Version 1
Version 2
Information Architecture
Refined the card's information hierarchy to ensure the recommended goal plan stands out, which which all participants overlooked.
Transfer Plan Customization
Added customization options to the transfer plan, allowing users to modify the recommended plan based on their needs and preferences.
User Insight
“The transfer type isn’t clear. What if I don’t want to set it up? How do I know the best way to save? It just feels incomplete."
Value of Changes
Iterations improve organization and enables users to customize the monthly transfer plan, increasing their control.
STYLE TILE
Final Usability Test
The second round of testing aimed to see if the iterations resolved the issues found in the first test, particularly the new graph view and enhanced content hierarchy. My goal was to uncover any usability issues with the high-fidelity prototype before the design handoff.
Objectives
Evaluate if users understand the iterated income and expense hierarchy.
Pass / Fail
Assess whether users find the graph view helpful and intuitive for understanding cash flow.
Determine if iterated terminology aligns with user expectations.
5/5
3/5
5/5
APPROACH
Style
In-person; moderated.
Duration
20-30 minutes each.
Number
5 participants.
Age
24-30 years old.
Measurable Results
Participants digest the content and layout more effectively than in test 1.
Participants say the graph view is helpful in understanding their financial state.
Participants easily understand content like "saving potential," expense categories and transfer information.
VALIDATE
Key Insights
Participants completed the tasks with minimal confusion and gave positive feedback on the updated screens, but they revealed that the graph view did not meet user expectations.
Poor Graph Clarity
Lacked visual clarity and was hard to understand at a glance.
Inconsistent Graph Focus
Yearly view clashes with the feature’s monthly focus.
Ineffective Breakdown
Bar graph made it harder to grasp spending habits.
01. Income and Expense Screens
Version 1
Version 2
Color Coded Circle Graph
Reduced cognitive load by changing to a color coded circle graph, enhancing users ability to view spending habits and cash flow insights with minimal effort.
Removed Toggle
Refined layout to display both the graph and list view simultaneously to save users an extra step and enable them to compare the graph and list all at once.
User Insight
“The graph is hard to read and confusing since it's yearly, while everything else is monthly. I'd prefer to see where my money is going broken down."
Value of Changes
This iterations makes financial data clearer and more accessible, enabling users to quickly spot cash flow insights with less navigation.
ITERATIONS
Home
Goal input
Onboarding
Goal input - filled
Income input
Goal added successfully
Expense input
Home
Goal input - empty
FINAL PRODUCT
Growth as a Designer
This project was a valuable learning experience that reshaped my approach to UX design. It taught me to embrace feedback, prioritize user needs and detach from personal design attachments. Working with financial design improved my ability to handle complex topics, and I gained experience in data visualization, learning which graph formats are most effective for quick understanding.
Project Challenges
One of the main obstacles was making complex financial concepts easy to understand without getting caught up in minor details too early. This taught me the value of early feedback on incomplete designs. Moving forward, I’ll prioritize usability testing sooner and refine my time management to stay focused on the big picture.
REFLECTION
