Rebuilding Financial Confidence for Young Adults — Sparly App UX Redesign
Sparly — an early-stage fintech startup — offers a financial fitness app for young adults struggling with low financial confidence and normalized credit culture. As the lead UX/UI designer and researcher, I conducted user testing, analysed findings and redesigned the onboarding flow and key screens to improve clarity, usability, and user trust.
UX Design & Research
The Problem
Sparly’s initial beta release had an onboarding flow and UI that confused users.
Users struggled with navigation (no “back” button), misunderstood button interactions (e.g. “Next” button perceived as swipeable), and lacked clarity about features — leading to uncertainty and friction.
Because the product is fintech and involves sensitive financial data, many users felt uneasy signing up (e.g. reluctance around BankID / identity verification), undermining trust.
These issues threatened the app’s usability, user retention and overall trust — critical for a financial-wellness product aimed at young users
Early testing highlighted significant trust and comprehension issues within Sparly’s onboarding experience
How It was Solved
User Research & Testing
Conducted user tests with 10 participants, representative of target demographics (Generation Z & Millennials). Participants used the app while thinking aloud; after, I interviewed them about their experience, pain points and concerns.
Performed content analysis on collected feedback; identified recurring themes such as Functionality, Visuals, Security concerns, and Overall Usability / Improvements.
Key findings: navigation confusion (lack of back button, misleading “Next” button), unclear feature explanations, inconsistent UI, and security/trust hesitation.
Ideation & Redesign
Created user persona(s) based on insights to understand user needs, worries, and motivations.
Restructured the onboarding flow to include a back button, clearer progress indication (timeline), and more transparent explanations of features and security.
Redesigned UI and interactions to improve clarity: cleaned up visuals, improved layout consistency, better typography and interaction cues.
Added new screens for better onboarding clarity and for users to track their spending and progress — making the core value of Sparly more accessible.
Iteration & Prototyping
Built a prototype in Figma with all redesigned flows and screens.
Applied changes based on user feedback: navigation fixes, clearer wording, updated visuals, improved security-related messaging, and added onboarding progress indicators.
Final Result
The redesigned app addressed key pain points: navigation confusion, lack of clarity, and trust issues.
The updated onboarding and UI make the experience more intuitive and user-friendly.
The redesign was approved by Sparly’s team and rolled out in subsequent updates.
Feedback from internal beta users suggests better clarity and confidence during signup.
Because this was done early in the product’s lifecycle, no reliable quantitative metrics are public yet — but qualitatively, user experience has significantly improved.
Final screens from the completed product