WealthTeamWork
Redesigning a Fintech Platform for Trust, Consistency, and Scale
Fintech
Startup
Web Application
Design System
Summary
WealthTeamWork is a web and mobile platform that enables households and financial advisors to collaborate on finances in one secure place. As Lead Product Designer, I transformed a developer-built platform into a structured, user-friendly experience by redesigning the UX/UI, implementing a scalable design system, applying new branding, and improving navigation and workflows. The redesign drastically improved usability and positioned WealthTeamWork for future growth and increased investor interest.
The Challenge
WealthTeamWork’s original platform was built by developers without design input, resulting in an inconsistent and cluttered experience. This not only made navigation and collaboration difficult but also undermined trust in a platform meant to handle sensitive financial data. A redesign was critical to create a clear, intuitive, and trustworthy experience that households and advisors could rely on to manage finances together.
Research
Defining the Problems
Because WealthTeamWork had a very small user base, direct research opportunities were limited. To bridge that gap, I worked closely with our CEO, Zaheer, a financial advisor who regularly engaged with the households and firms using the product. He shared user feedback and helped me understand their key needs and frustrations.
In parallel, I conducted a comprehensive UX audit of both the web and mobile platforms. This revealed significant inconsistencies in navigation, interaction patterns, and visual design, which eroded user confidence and made the product feel fragmented.
These combined insights showed that the platform’s issues went far beyond aesthetics. A cohesive redesign was needed to simplify core workflows and rebuild the experience around clarity, consistency, and trust. From this research, several key pain points emerged:
Inconsistent Design and Information Overload
Across the application, WealthTeamWork’s interface lacked cohesion. Components used varying styles and visual treatments, which made the product feel unpolished and untrustworthy for users handling sensitive financial information. Most pages relied heavily on dense tables, sometimes stacking five or more at once, leading to visual noise and cognitive overload.
Household dashboard
Confusing Navigation Structure
The platform’s navigation primarily reflected advisor workflows, leaving household users with limited functionality and unclear pathways. The global top menu was almost entirely focused on advisor tools, while household users saw only “Home.” This imbalance made it difficult for non-advisor users to find relevant features and understand their place within the system.
Pre-redesign navigation structure
Complex Household and User Management
Adding new users within a household required over fifteen separate input fields, making the process tedious and error-prone. The relationship between firms, advisors, and households was also poorly communicated, leaving users unsure how their actions affected shared data and permissions.
User management and add household member screens
Fragmented Communication Experience
Communication was one of WealthTeamWork’s key features, designed to centralize messaging between household members and professional service partners. However, conversations were scattered across multiple tools. Users could send messages in a persistent sidebar or leave comments on individual records, which often led to duplicate or conflicting discussions. This fragmentation made it difficult for households and advisors to keep track of conversations and maintain context across financial documents.
Record details page showing the messaging panel on the far left and record comments directly beside it
Approach
From Problems to Solutions
Solving these four pain points became the goal of the redesign. I began by focusing on the most critical issues: visual consistency and navigation structure. These set the stage for everything else, creating a stable base to build on. Once the core structure was defined, I moved on to improving how users communicated within the platform and how new users were managed.
Each area of the product went through an intentional design process that began with low-fidelity wireframes, moved into mid-fidelity prototypes, and ended with polished high-fidelity designs. At every step, I gathered feedback through design reviews and iterations. This steady progression helped turn what had once been a scattered, developer-built product into a cohesive and intuitive experience.
Visual Identity and Design System
Consistency is Key
We revisited WealthTeamWork’s brand to strengthen the foundation of the product. The original logo and colors felt dated and did not convey the trust and security expected from a fintech platform. The new logo, inspired by yin-yang principles, symbolizes balance, growth, and the interconnectedness of households and advisors. A modern color palette was introduced to evoke innovation, reliability, and approachability.
To carry this consistency across the product, I chose MUI as the design system and customized it to match the new brand. Using a prebuilt system was especially important for a young startup, allowing for faster iteration while maintaining visual consistency and providing a scalable foundation for the redesign.
A modern, tech-forward identity built on balance, growth, and continuous progress.
Primary blue conveys reliability and security, while secondary purple adds a modern, tech-forward edge.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Exploring the Options
I began low-fidelity design by focusing on the web version of the app, since most users manage their financial lives on desktop rather than mobile. The wireframes prioritized structure and core functionality, allowing me to validate navigation, layouts, and key user flows before introducing visual design. To ensure these designs met both user and business needs, I conducted numerous design reviews with our developers and leadership. I incorporated their feedback and made adjustments iteratively until we felt confident moving forward. This approach ensured the foundation of the experience was intuitive, consistent, and user-centered.
Navigation
To address the confusing navigation, I explored several low-fidelity layouts for the household and advisor menus. I experimented with menu hierarchy, household switching, and category organization to make it clear for both advisors and household users. Early sketches helped surface potential conflicts between global actions and household-specific content, which led me to a two-tiered navigation structure.
Low-fidelity navigation showcasing an advisor's view (left) and a household member's view (right)
User Management
For the household and user management workflows, I focused on creating a cohesive Household Management screen. Low-fidelity wireframes allowed me to experiment with visualizing relationships between households, users, firms, and professionals in a clear, simple way. I also explored streamlined flows for adding new users, professionals, and firms, reducing friction and making it easier for advisors and household leaders to manage accounts efficiently.
Low-fidelity user management screens.
Communication
For messaging and record comments, I explored multiple ways to consolidate fragmented communication. Low-fidelity wireframes tested different panel placements and integration with records. We ultimately settled on changing the appearance of record comments to more closely resemble a traditional comment section rather than a message thread, which clarified context and reduced confusion when multiple conversations were happening on the same screen.
Low-fidelity messaging (left) and comment (right) views.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Bringing Structure to Life
With low-fidelity wireframes complete across the platform, I moved into mid-fidelity to focus on visual refinement and consistency. This stage was about translating structure into a cohesive visual language by applying the new color palette, typography, and MUI components to bring the product closer to its final form. Seeing the design system come to life across key screens helped validate decisions around hierarchy, spacing, and overall aesthetics, bridging the gap between early concepts and high-fidelity design.
Mid-fidelity household overview and net worth screens.
Mid-fidelity record category and add record screens.
Mid-fidelity record details and attached documents screens
Moving Forward Independently
WealthTeamWork suspended operations during the mid-fidelity stage, which left the redesign unfinished. After the company closed, I continued refining the work on my own and brought the core web flows, including household overview, net worth, record management, and household access, to a high-fidelity state.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Revisiting and Refining the Vision
When the company shut down, the redesign was put on hold midway through. About six months later, I decided to revisit WealthTeamWork on my own. I wanted to bring the project to a polished, high-fidelity state, and I was curious to see how much further I could take it with what I had learned since.
Coming back with a fresh perspective, I made several major improvements to both the visual design and overall experience:
Replaced the existing typography with a cleaner, more readable typeface that matched the professional tone of the product.
Refined the communication model so each record included its own dedicated message thread, keeping discussions focused and organized.
Simplified user management by clearly showing relationships between households, professionals, and firms, while reducing the process of adding new members to a few quick steps.
Unified the navigation into a single sidebar, introducing a dropdown for household selection and adding a persistent header with breadcrumbs and back navigation for clarity.
These refinements brought the product closer to the reliable, modern experience I had envisioned from the start.
Household Overview and Net Worth
A walkthrough of the household overview and net worth, showing how users can review their finances and adjust included records.
Manage Household
Accept, update, and invite users and firms in the household.
Record Management
Creating a new record and setting custom access permissions.
Messaging
Coordinating with household members through direct and record-based messaging.
Takeaways
My time at WealthTeamWork was my first experience working at a startup with a structured product team. While the project did not conclude as we had initially anticipated, it was an incredibly valuable experience. I strengthened not only my design skills but also my ability to advocate for and communicate the reasoning behind my design decisions. I learned how to move quickly and adapt in a startup environment, where every day brings new challenges and priorities are constantly shifting.
Although this project doesn’t have measurable impact metrics, the team and leadership were very pleased with the direction of the redesign. My managers expressed gratitude for the state of the project when operations were paused, knowing they could showcase the redesign to investors to generate interest and support for the company.