PLATFORM TRUST
Reassure people about the product.
Social proof, regulatory reassurance and transparent fees answer a question detractors weren’t asking.
LunarReported after the redesign
Helping people see themselves as investors.
Research shifted the strategy from more education to fewer, more meaningful decisions. Themes became the discovery layer.
- My role
- LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER · LUNAR, NORDIC DIGITAL BANK · INVEST PRODUCT
- Scope
- The invest product at Lunar, a Nordic digital bank: research, strategy, and the path to a first investment.
- Key decision
- Cut the expected education layer; use themes as the discovery layer and reduce the purchase to one question.
Context
The investment product was underperforming. The instinct was to add features. That instinct was wrong.
Lunar had genuine trust in banking. People used the core product daily and recommended it to friends. The investment offering still stalled, and every obvious fix on the table assumed the problem was the product. I wasn’t sure it was.
I structured the research around the two extremes: detractors who had abandoned the flow, and ambassadors who wanted to move faster. They rarely contradicted each other. The gap between them became the agenda.
Signals that prompted a closer look
61%
completion at baseline
8 days
hesitation before the first investment
Insight
Most fintech onboarding solves platform trust. Lunar had a self-trust problem.
If the problem is platform trust, you add social proof, regulatory reassurance, transparent fees. If the problem is self-trust, you remove decisions.
Detractors never once said the platform felt risky. They said investing wasn’t for someone like them. The barrier was identity, not knowledge.
SELF-TRUST
Remove decisions.
The barrier was identity, not knowledge. Fewer, more meaningful decisions lower it.
DETRACTOR INTERVIEWS
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
A recurring line across every detractor interview.
Decisions
Remove decisions. Create entry points that feel like actions, not commitments.
Themes became the discovery layer. Investing in Tech Giants is a statement of belief, not a judgment about asset allocation. The investment is the same. The person’s relationship to it is completely different. And the purchase flow asks exactly one question: how many shares.
I cut the education layer, which was the direction everyone expected. Detractors didn’t need to learn more. They needed a reason to see themselves as investors. Education solves a knowledge gap; themes solve an identity gap. The research only found the second one.
Impact
The product stopped requiring users to generate their own motivation.
A 23-point completion improvement in a financial product is an information architecture win, not a visual one. Eight days of hesitation collapsed to 36 hours because the motivation now lived in the product.
Themed portfolios created a reason to return that asset-class browsing never did. Not better returns. A better relationship to the decision.
61→84%
onboarding completion
8d→36h
time to first investment
3.2×
return frequency, themed
What changed, and where
Impact across onboarding, first investment and return
Moving the motivation into the product changed how quickly people started investing, and how often they came back.
01
Onboarding
Completion after the redesign
More people finished the flow.
- Onboarding completion rose from 61% to 84%.
- An information architecture win, not a visual one.
02
First investment
Time to first investment
Hesitation collapsed from days to hours.
- Time to first investment fell from 8 days to 36 hours.
- The purchase flow asks exactly one question: how many shares.
03
Return
Return frequency, themed
Themes created a reason to come back.
- Themed portfolios saw 3.2× the return frequency.
- Asset-class browsing never created that pull.
Not better returns. A better relationship to the decision.