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Product Design LeadUX ResearchDesign Systems
The brief
RoleProduct Design Lead
PartnerVP of Product
ScopeChase app · J.P. Morgan advisory
I led the design vision for two connected projects: the award-winning Chase mobile banking app, and the revamped J.P. Morgan advisory platform inside it.
The goal was to modernize digital investing: AI-assisted recommendations, simpler client onboarding and risk settings anyone can understand. Working closely with the VP of Product, I helped redefine how Chase customers discover, explore and manage their portfolios.
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Chase J.P. Morgan Wealth Management
Product Design Lead
Private-bank thinking,
for a first $1,000.
for a first $1,000.
I moved from designing everyday banking in the Chase app to J.P. Morgan wealth management, just as automated investing was rewriting who gets advice. The brief: bring a J.P. Morgan-grade investing experience to Chase customers who had never had an advisor, starting with money already sitting in their checking account.
From
Everyday banking on the phone: checking, savings, cards and bill pay, used daily by millions.
To
Wealth management: automated portfolios, self-directed trading and advisors, once reserved for the few.
~½1
of U.S. households already banked with Chase
50M+2
people used the Chase app and website
$1T2
projected robo-advisor assets by 2020, from almost zero in 2012
31%3
of Americans under 30 owned stocks
1. JPMorgan Chase, You Invest Portfolios launch release, July 2019. 2. CNBC, July 2019, citing Chase and A.T. Kearney. 3. Gallup, 2017, via CNBC.
02The shift
Advice used to start at the top. Software changed who gets in.
Robo-advisors went from almost nothing in 2012 to a projected trillion dollars by 2020. A questionnaire in, a diversified portfolio out, rebalanced automatically, for a fraction of a traditional advisor's fee. Our customers had noticed, and many were already investing somewhere else.
Traditional advisor
Automated
Hybrid
How it starts
A meeting with an advisor
A five-minute questionnaire
Questionnaire, plus an advisor on call
What it costs
1% or more of assets, every year
About 0.25% to 0.35% a year
In between
Who it served
Higher-balance clients
Anyone with a phone
People who want a human backstop
What a yearly fee costs you
$2,800
invested
$500$250,000
At 1.00%$28 / yr
At 0.35%$10 / yr
You keep $18 more each year. But the bigger shift wasn't the fee: a first $1,000 was finally welcome.
Illustrative, advisory fees only.
03Benchmark
Fintech set the bar. We studied it closely.
Wealthfront, Betterment and Swell made investing feel like an app, not an appointment. I benchmarked how each one onboards people, explains risk and keeps them coming back, then mapped what Chase could offer that none of them could.
Minimum to start
Betterment
$0
Swell
$50
Wealthfront
$500
J.P. Morgan, 2019 launch
$2,500Plan: lower to $500
Wealthfront
What they nailed
Planning first. You see the future you're investing toward before you pick anything.
What we took
Goal and timeline come before any fund names.
Betterment
What they nailed
No minimum, plain language and goals as simple buckets.
What we took
Start with whatever you have, and name what it's for.
Swell
Closed in 2019What they nailed
Invest in what you care about: clean water, renewable energy, green tech.
What we took
Motivation is an onboarding input, not just risk tolerance.
Our unfair advantage
They had to win a download. We were already on the phone.
The money, the trust and the daily habit already lived in the Chase app.
Published minimums and fees around 2019–2020. Sources: CNBC (July 2019), CNBC Select, Robo Advisor Pros, company materials.
04Research
Meet the investor we were designing for.
Interviews shaped a persona and a journey map. Then I put business, user and technical goals side by side, so product, engineering and brand were arguing about the same problem, and ranked every feature idea by impact and cost.
J
Joseph, 28
Business development · Cleveland, OH
Beginner investor
Banks with
VenmoChimeNubank
“I've been in the industry for a number of years. I'd love to start investing.”
Motivation
He's around investing all day, but never felt comfortable investing with a legacy bank. Fintech apps got him curious.
Frustration
His bank's app made investing feel slow and confusing, so he kept his savings in cash.
Needs
An app that explains just enough to invest with confidence, in anything.
Mindset
Cautious. Student debt and a shaky economy made him careful with every dollar.
The journey, and where it dipped
Goal
See results at the end of the day, without decoding them.
Doing
Checking the fund at work, comparing today's value to what went in.
Thinking
“There's a lot of information. Tons of graphs and numbers.”
Design opportunity
One number that matters up top. Detail on demand.
Three sets of goals, one overlap
—Invest inside the Chase app, without being sent elsewhere
—Less jargon, simpler language
—Something as easy as the fintech apps friends use
—Understand what I'm risking, and my returns
Where they met: a new personal-investing feature, built into the current Chase app.
What to build first
Lower impact · Higher costHigher impact
The MVP came from the high-impact, low-cost corner: goals, an overview of savings and investments, and every account in one list.
05The challenge
One customer. Many business lines.
Banking, investing, advisors and credit each had their own goals, metrics and brand standards. The customer doesn't care which team owns a screen. The hard part was finding honest moments to invite people from saving into investing, without it ever feeling like a sales pitch.
Checking
Savings
Credit cards
Home & auto
The
customer
customer
one login, one app
Bridges we designed
Accounts overviewIdle-cash promptGoals from savingsAdvisor handoff
Automated portfolios
Self-directed trading
Advisors
Life moments, not sales moments
People save, spend and invest around what's happening in their lives. Pick a moment to see the motivation, and the kind of prompt we explored.
“It's safe in checking. Isn't it?”
Save
Spend
Invest
Accounts
Your balance has stayed above your usual spending for 3 months
Keep a cushion, and let the rest start growing toward a goal you choose.
Start a goalNot now
These are actual illustrative prompts from the opportunity mapping. Every one had a respectful “Not now”.
06Wireframes
Sketch to flow: investing that feels like banking.
I sketched eighteen screens on paper, then tightened the core path into a low-fidelity flow: from the accounts screen, through five plain questions, to a portfolio funded from checking in one step. Every screen went through iterations. Flip between them to see what we chose, and why the others didn't make it.
01
of 06 · Where investing first shows up
Accounts
Iterations
Low-fidelity flows and iterations drawn from my original figma layouts and figjam flows, including some from my paper sketches.
07Brand system
Two brands, one system,
one customer.
one customer.
Investing had to feel like a step up without feeling like a different company. The Chase design system stayed the foundation: components, spacing, accessibility. J.P. Morgan arrived as a brand layer on top: warmer neutrals, bronze accents and a serif for the moments that matter.
J.P. Morgan layer · sampled from brand materials
Ivory
#F4F0E7
Sand
#E1D5C2
Gold
#B8925A
Bronze
#8F5A3A
Espresso
#1A1410
Chase foundation · from the app UI kit
Chase blue
#117ACA
Deep blue
#0068B6
Bright blue
#1C90FC
Mist
#EEEEEE
Charcoal
#303030
Aa Aa
Serif, used sparingly: balances, results, the moments that matter.
Aa Aa
Clean humanist sans for everything you read and tap.
Portfolio
Moderate growth
$1,048.20
+4.8% since you started
US stocks
64%
International
18%
Bonds
18%
Add money
Same component, same structure. Only the brand layer changes: color, type, corners and voice.
08Outcome
A high-end product, now open to everyday investors.
What started as a J.P. Morgan service for the few became something a Chase customer could start from the app they already open every day, with a thousand dollars and five questions.
01
Integrated dashboard
Banking and investments managed side by side, in one place.
02
Personalized advisory tools
Recommendations explained in plain language, so customers trust what they're shown.
03
Simplified onboarding
Five questions to a portfolio, funded from Chase in one step.
04
Approachable risk settings
Risk shown as a dial you can read and change, not a form to decode.
Where investors are going
The next investor starts small, and expects to be treated like a private client.
Lower minimums
CNBC, 2019J.P. Morgan launched automated portfolios at $2,500 in 2019 and planned to bring the minimum down to $500.
Hybrid advice
CNBC, 2019Automation for the everyday, a human for the big decisions. A hybrid tier was already on the roadmap.
Values-led investing
BenchmarkPeople increasingly want their money to reflect what they care about, the idea Swell built a product on.
Investing inside banking
ResearchThe next investor won't download a new app. They'll start where their paycheck already lands.
Wealth management shouldn't start at a net worth. It should start at a first deposit.
Chase × J.P. Morgan Wealth Management
09Measurable impact
Goals people keep funding, not just setting.
What the work was built to move, with targets set against industry benchmarks for the category.
+25%
Investors who set a goal
Goals lead onboarding, so the first decision is what you're saving for, not which fund.
2×
Monthly contributions
Goal-based savers typically put away far more than people saving without a target.
−15%
Onboarding drop-off
Fewer screens and plain language between opening the app and the first deposit.
North-star metric
New investors still contributing after 90 days
46%61%Target
Retention is where automated investing products win or lose; goals keep people coming back.
BeforeLaunchTarget
Want to
see more?
Reach out and I’ll walk you through more of my work, including projects for Disney, Wolf & Shepherd, Franklin Templeton, Block One, and JPMorgan.
Reach out to view more of my portfolio work – including projects from Disney, Wolf & Shepherd, Franklin Templeton, Block One, and JPMorgan.
Current availability
We’re open for business and new collaborations.
Current availability
We’re open for business and new collaborations.
Live sites I designed