Onboarding Experience
OCT’25-DEC’25
Redesigned a beta version of the product to a full fledged product driving strategic workshops, interaction design and design system contribution.
Overview
Finny is an AI-powered financial advisory app helping users work toward Financial Independence (FIRE) through data-driven insights and personalised planning.
My Role
I led design and product strategy for Finny’s MVP, working closely with the founder to define positioning, onboarding strategy, and execution. My ownership spanned discovery → onboarding UX → post-launch validation.
Problem
Finny’s MVP needed a smooth onboarding flow that guided new users from signup to linking their bank and investment accounts within minutes.
This was crucial for instantly calculating their personalised FIRE age. The challenge was to make onboarding simple, trustworthy, and motivating so users quickly experienced Finny’s core value and understood why it matters.
Research
I orchestrated the entire user research process for this project, overseeing planning, recruitment, execution, and insight derivation. My objective was to delve into the goals, needs, and pain points of users as they navigate the realms of personal finance.
This was crucial for instantly calculating their personalised FIRE age. The challenge was to make onboarding simple, trustworthy, and motivating so users quickly experienced Finny’s core value and understood why it matters.
Research method
Generative research
Interview type
Online - 1 on 1
Users interviewed
Working professtionals
Key Insights
I orchestrated the entire user research process for this project, overseeing planning, recruitment, execution, and insight derivation. My objective was to delve into the goals, needs, and pain points of users as they navigate the realms of personal finance.
This was crucial for instantly calculating their personalised FIRE age. The challenge was to make onboarding simple, trustworthy, and motivating so users quickly experienced Finny’s core value and understood why it matters.
Users Seeking Financial Freedom
Most users were unfamiliar with the term FIRE. However, many shared an aspiration to retire early or achieve financial freedom, though with varied personal definitions.
Trust & Transparency Before Transaction
Users need a humane touch to build a strong trust and a clear rationale before sharing data or evaluating paid advisory.
Financial Jargon Barriers
Many users are unfamiliar with complex financial terminology, communication must be simplified to ensure clarity and drive meaningful user action
The Opportunity
“How might we create a simple and trustworthy onboarding flow that helps users connect their accounts quickly and experience Finny’s core value in their very first session?”
The Solution
The strategy was to deliver the core value proposition in the very first session by generating a personalised FIRE report, helping users instantly understand the “why” behind sharing their data.
Broke the long onboarding journey into smaller, achievable milestones.
Reinforced progress at each step to keep users motivated and reduce drop-offs.
Clearly explained why an OTP was required after each step to build trust and transparency.
Educated users on how their financial data would be fetched and used, reducing uncertainty and friction.
Value-first onboarding strategy
Right after download, introduce users to Finny’s core value proposition through a clear, engaging splash screen.
Journey led onboarding
The journey map reinforces our promise: a personalised FIRE report in under 5 minutes. It gives users immediate clarity on the steps involved and progressively reveals more information as they reach each stage.
FIRE education without jargon
Reframed FIRE into relatable life stages (Survive → Secure → Aspire → Dream)
Used visual progression instead of definitions
Shifted from abstract finance concepts to personal relevance
This helped users emotionally connect before seeing numbers.
“Aha moments” baked into onboarding
Users found increasing value at every stage of the process, beginning with net worth clarity, moving into cashflow visibility, and culminating in the calculation of their FIRE age, with each milestone reinforcing the importance of the onboarding experience.
Each milestone reinforced why onboarding mattered.
The Impact
86%
of the users completed the onboarding flow in first session.
All 100 build-in-public slots were claimed in under 2 hours, bringing in 250+ users within the first 24 hours.
What users are saying?
We’ve received encouraging feedback from our first 100 users:
Many called out the UI as beautiful and intuitive
Several described the onboarding as smooth
There’s strong demand to pull in PF, insurance, and car data to complete the picture (PF fetch is coming up in the next few days)
A few minor bugs and small feature requests have already been fixed in the last 2–3 days, with more being worked on this week
