Chase Bank
UX Research, Field Research, Contextual Inquiry, User Interviews, Information Architecture, Wireframing & Prototyping, Usability Testing, Accessibility Testing
The Business Problem
The Question
Customer Problem Statement
The Process
Discover
We conducted user interviews, contextual inquiry, and field observation at a Chase branch, alongside secondary research into financial literacy and U.S. banking regulation.
Define
We synthesized findings into a user mental model, journey map, and persona to clarify what users actually need.
Understanding our Users
1.The Passive Checker
Uses the app daily for transactions but doesn't know Chase's financial literacy resources exist.
2.The Aware but Stuck
Understands credit in theory but can't connect daily behavior to score changes, and can't find the tools that would help.
3.The Anxious Starter
Wants to get their finances together but doesn't know where to start, and avoids features that feel exposing.
Visibility
Elevated the Digital Assistant to a full-width bubble at the top of the landing page, so the Passive Checker actually discovers it.
Adding clarity to financial literacy tools for college students and early professionals
Think about the last time you opened your banking app. You checked your balance, maybe your credit score, and closed it. If you wanted to actually understand why that score moved, or what to do about it, you'd have to go somewhere else entirely.
Chase's mobile app has no financial literacy resources built in. The resources exist, but they're buried on the website, not in the app people actually open every day.
Team - Carlos Soriano, Pragya Lohia, Rosaline Lee
Role - Product Designer & Researcher, working in a team of three
Chase's literacy content exists, but not where users are.
Under the Community Reinvestment Act, U.S. banks are encouraged to support the financial well-being of the communities they serve, including through education. Our secondary research reviewed Chase's Financial Education Center, website content, workshops, and in-app features. We found that while a substantial portion of Chase's literacy content exists outside the app, several helpful in-app features already exist but aren't surfaced to users.
How might we design an experience that meets users where they already are?
The core problem: users are managing their finances inside an app that never teaches them how.
College students and early-career professionals check the Chase app daily to track spending and pay bills, but the financial literacy resources that could help them build real confidence live almost entirely outside the app, on the website, in workshops, in a Financial Education Center most users never visit.
"I check my credit score sometimes because I know it affects things like loans and credit cards, but I'm still figuring out how it actually moves up or down."
—graduate school student
"If those tools exist, I never found them. Everything's focused on transactions and rewards, not on helping you actually learn about money."
—college freshman
"I'd only use those features if I know my information stays private. I want to learn about money, but I don't want anyone seeing my spending."
—early professional
We used the Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver framework
Develop
We built a sitemap, information architecture, and wireframes around four design concepts, then tested and refined them.
Deliver
We built a high-fidelity prototype and tested it with real users to validate the direction.
Our research surfaced three user archetypes:
The Solution
A redesign built around four concepts
Transparency
A detailed credit score screen that breaks down each factor affecting the score in plain language, for the Anxious Starter.
Personalization
A Learning Tracker that surfaces relevant resources based on the user's financial stage, for the Aware but Stuck.
Active Learning
Encourages users to learn by engaging directly with the app's own features, rather than reading about them separately.
User Testing
We ran six moderated usability sessions on our high-fidelity prototype, using the think-aloud method.
"I like that I don't have to type anything. The predefined buttons make the experience faster, but I wonder how the keyword response works if I type things."
—user tester, on the redesigned chatbot
"I really like the charts. The visuals are straightforward and easy to interpret at first glance. But I'm wondering why the design is a donut chart, I think I'm more familiar with pie charts.”
—user tester, on the spending breakdown
Reflection
What I learned
This project reinforced that financial literacy isn't a content problem, it's a placement problem. Chase already has useful tools and information; the work was making sure people encountered them at the moment they actually needed them, not off in a separate resource hub.
What I'd improve
The usability testing surfaced that onboarding clarity for new users remains insufficient, and the active learning and chatbot concepts need deeper development before they'd hold up with a broader set of users.