WalletGenius Redesign
A product and design case study using the Double Diamond framework to relaunch a personal finance site for millennials.
🔍 Context & Challenge
My employer wanted to rebrand and relaunch an outdated finance site into a premium content destination called WalletGenius. The new site would support lead generation efforts and expand our publishing reach into the competitive personal finance vertical.
We saw an opportunity to differentiate through user experience — building a brand millennials could trust to help them make major financial decisions like buying a house or selecting life insurance.
But to succeed, the redesign needed to balance:
Brand and UX excellence (to build trust and engagement)
Optimized monetization flows (to fuel lead generation)
Platform scalability (for future growth)
A credible voice (in a space where trust is everything)
Screenshots from Before the Redesign
🧭 Design Approach: The Double Diamond Framework
To tackle the challenge strategically, we followed the Double Diamond Design Thinking framework:
Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver
This approach helped us stay grounded in real user problems while enabling cross-functional creativity and validation throughout the process.
💎 Phase 1: Discover
We began by exploring the landscape and empathizing with users:
User Research: Surveys and interviews with millennials navigating major life purchases
Stakeholder Interviews: Business leads, editors, SEO team, and monetization experts
Market Research: Competitive analysis of sites like NerdWallet, Credit Karma, and The Motley Fool
Empathy Mapping: Identified emotional drivers, fears, and expectations around financial literacy
🔑 Key Insight: Millennials find personal finance stressful and confusing — but don’t know what sources to trust. They want guidance, not jargon.
💡 Phase 2: Define
We synthesized research findings to define a clear, actionable problem:
🌟 Problem Statement:
How might we create a trustworthy and educational finance brand that empowers millennials to confidently make big financial decisions?
We also created two primary personas based on our research:
The Earner: Focused on budgeting, taxes, and saving for the future
The Accelerator: Interested in investing, mortgages, and high-impact financial growth
Using affinity mapping, user journey mapping, and a collaborative design brief, we aligned on key goals:
Create helpful, clear content for each stage of the financial decision-making journey
Build trust with tone, visual identity, and UX design
Match monetization methods to user context — not just page content
🧪 Phase 3: Develop
With clear user problems and goals in mind, we moved into solution mode:
Ideation Workshops: Cross-functional brainstorms using card sorting and dot voting
Wireframing: Created low-fidelity layouts for key page types
Prototyping: Built testable versions of articles, tools, and lead gen flows
User Testing: Recruited users via UserTesting.com to validate and refine ideas
🔁 Key Pivot: Early tests showed that users in the early research phase were overwhelmed by aggressive lead gen. We adjusted our flows to better align monetization with the purchase journey stage.
🚀 Phase 4: Deliver
We translated the validated vision into a polished, scalable product:
Content Strategy: Aligned articles, tools, and quizzes to different stages of the user journey
Monetization Mapping:
Top of Funnel: Display ads for “Need Recognition”
Mid Funnel: Related offers for “Research” phase
Bottom Funnel: Offer comparisons for “Purchase Decision”
Final Design & Development: Collaborated closely across product, design, and engineering to implement the new brand and platform
QA & Launch: Thorough testing across devices and user types before rollout
🧭 Reframing the Brand
The final product and brand narrative focused on clarity, empowerment, and accessibility:
WalletGenius is a personal finance website designed to help you make smart financial decisions. Whether you’re struggling to get by or looking to make a huge investment, we have content designed to guide you along the way. We offer everything from general budgeting advice and income tax tips, to specific product recommendations. Our carefully fact-checked content aims to help you achieve future financial success — whatever that means to you.
✅ Results
Validated UX improvements through moderated user testing
Refined monetization strategies mapped to user journey phases
Increased user trust through clearer content hierarchy and brand voice
Positioned WalletGenius as a scalable, high-performing site in the finance vertical
We launched with a platform built for long-term growth — not just monetization, but also genuine user value.
🧩 What This Case Study Shows
This project highlights my ability to:
Drive cross-functional alignment using Design Thinking
Lead discovery and research to define a clear problem space
Translate user needs into monetizable content strategies
Build and validate experiences that serve both business and user goals