Toshi - Hadass Sternberg

Toshi — 2022
Invest for retirement with every purchase

We increased user engagement in the Toshi app by redesigning its investment portfolio overview specifically aimed at users with no prior investment experience. We simplified the traditional stock-portfolio view, adding features to bridge insights and holistically enhance reliability and trust with users.

Toshi is a German based startup that helps users invest money for their retirement. Toshi's app automation invests a percentage of every cashless purchase the user makes into a long-term portfolio.
🏆 First place winner project in Ironhack Germany hackshow Dec 2022 (UX/UI category)

My responsibilities: UX Research, UX Design, Prototyping, Design System, UI Design
Project duration: 2 weeks
Team: 2 product designers
Credits: Ironhack Berlin, Toshi

The Toshi app

Toshi is an investment app for beginners with no prior experience. It automatically invests a percentage of every cashless purchase into long-term stock investments. With three portfolio options varying in risk, Toshi makes retirement investing simple and accessible.

The core target users are: Germany based 18-45 y.o. men and women, with no prior investment experience.

Project kick-off

We joined the project when Toshi was in the seed stage, with prototype flows in place and are at the point of market validation.

Toshi's problem statement:
How can we redesign a portfolio overview which has all necessary information and is easy to understand for people who did not invest before?

Original app screens

The challenge

In a stakeholder interview, we learned that Toshi's team was stuck at the market validation stage due to user mistrust and frustration. We hypothesized that their broad targeting approach made it difficult to identify consistent behavioral patterns, hindering the ability to address users' actual needs.

Our main challenge: How can we address the underlying emotional and psychological barriers that users faced regarding using the app, and retirement investments?

The process

We began with a comprehensive research phase conducted multiple research methods.

The goals of our research were:
• Understand the users' needs and motivations: Through usability tests on the original app and user interviews, we identified pain points, especially confusion and frustration with the app, while empathizing with users' fears around financial decisions.
• Learn best practices for independent stock investment: We conducted a SME interview and competitor analysis to gather insights on successful financial product design, ensuring our solution was grounded in industry standards.

Usability test vs SME interview quotes

User interviews results in KPIs

Discovering design oportunities

We clustered insights using an affinity diagram and prioritized pain points with dot-voting. This led to creating two personas — Julia and Mateo — representing user's behavioral archetypess.

We focus on the following key pain-points:
• Finance scares me: Users felt overwhelmed by financial jargon and unclear data.
• Lack of trust: Users lacked confidence in the platform's security and reliability.
• Stressful market moments: Users were anxious about losing money, especially during market fluctuations.

User interviews transcripts highlights important insights

Affinity diagram clustering user's feedback, needs and pain-points

Ideation to solution

Design Iterations: Starting with low-fidelity wireframes, we quickly iterated based on feedback, simplifying the flow and improving task completion times.
The final mid-fidelity prototype was tested to ensure it met user needs.

User story

As a beginner investor, I want to easily track my investments and understand my portfolio's performance, so I can make informed decisions about my retirement savings without feeling overwhelmed.

Low-fi concept iterations

User flow - Market drop scenario

Design prototype for usability test

The Solution: Simplifying overview for beginners

Our solution simplified the portfolio overview by prioritizing clear insights delivery over complex data. Guided by the pain-point related article by NN group, we addressed pain points at the interaction and journey levels, ensuring a smoother user experience.

Top features addressing user's pain points:
• Portfolio overview simplification
• Added expert advice and info banners
• User's goal visualization
• Look&feel rebranding

Strech feature ideas proposed to Toshi were: Enhancing app security, and adding educational section for engagments.

Improving features

Toshi app redesign

Action driven home screen

The new home page simplifies navigation, boosts user confidence, and fosters long-term engagement by aligning the interface with users' goals and knowledge-building needs.

Key improvments:
• Tangible goal representation: Visualize retirement goals with a house illustration, aligning with user feedback.
• Goal progress banners: Motivate consistent investing with prompts tied to retirement goals.
• Educational links (stretch goal): Provide beginner-friendly articles to build confidence.

Primary portfolio card

New home screen

Portfolio insights over data

Recognizing that many users lack the skills to interpret complex investment portfolio data, we focused on presenting simplified, data-driven insights.

The new design emphasizes key indicators and straightforward summaries that clearly communicate the status of their portfolio, empowering users to understand their investments without needing to be financial experts.

New portfolio screen

Monthly and long-term investment progress bars

Live portflio is secondary

Building on the importance of accessibility and transparency in financial products, we ensured that all information is readily available to users

While users can access live portfolio activity, this feature is positioned as secondary in the site-map hierarchy. This strategic placement allows users to prioritize key insights and simplified data first, ensuring they have a clear understanding of their portfolio status without overwhelming them with real-time fluctuations.

Guiding tooltips

New live portfolio screen

Clear transaction overview

Usability tests revealed that users experienced significant frustration with the transaction view, particularly when they struggled to understand the distribution of transactions.

To address this, the new design organizes the transaction overview chronologically, providing users with a clear and coherent view of their investment history. This structured layout allows users to easily track their transactions over time, enhancing their understanding of investment patterns and improving overall usability.

New transactions screen

Transactions history section

Enhancing trust through rebranding

Toshi's team was open to a brand redesign to address user feedback about the app feeling untrustworthy and game-like.
I rebranded the app using the core colors while creating a new look and feel that communicates reliability and professionalism.

Toshi brand and design system redsign

The Outcome

Our user testing confirmed that the redesign achieved its goals, 4 out of 5 task success. Our improvements show that the navigation optimization and interface refreshment created a more intuitive and reliable experience, directly addressing user pain-points and enhancing satisfaction.

Toshi’s team integrated the following core insights from our research and new experience design features in their MVP launch:
Embedded the tangible goal visualizations, the objective info and expert advice banners, and more transparency about the portfolio breakdown.

Toshi display

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