A stylized black and gray horse rearing up on its hind legs.

Motivate to save

Position

Provide new and existing customers the opportunity to save money towards a goal,, e.g. financial safety, home deposit, etc

Problems

Current design has many build and design drawbacks, e.g. wrong illustration size, non accessible colours, bespoke components
The current visual experience of saving feels mechanistic and is lacking in emotion or incentive

Possibilities

Create a consistent experience and, if possible, avoid using bespoke elements unless they will benefit the experience
Explore bringing emotion into the design to aid the motivational aspect of consistent saving

Heuristic evaluation of current ‘Savings’
Card component + Screen

Discovery

The design was using inaccessible colours, incorrect components and icons, creating an imbalance in the hierarchy. There was too much white, which made scanning tricky; users relied on reading text to make sense of the content.

Insight

We need to implement correct UI components
Explore new ways of improving content comprehension

Exploration

Create a new ‘Savings card’
Test how a number of such cards might work when typically stacked and when on a summary page

Peer review + Comparison analysis

Research

After resolving several UI issues, I recognised an opportunity to explore a more emotionally resonant savings card design. The updated version, while clearer and more readable than the live version, still felt corporate and emotionally detached. Given that the Lloyds brand has always prioritised understanding people's needs beyond mere numbers, I investigated how other businesses used tone-of-voice to communicate with customers about data, forms, and savings.

I conducted visual assessments of pages from various high street and challenger banks, evaluating their approaches against human-centred design principles: clarity, simplicity, transparency, emotional awareness, goal-oriented guidance, and trust-building elements. This analysis revealed what each sector executed well and where opportunities for improvement existed.

Final designs

Reasoning

Concept 1: explored minor adjustments to data gauges and the overall colour scheme. While this addressed previous CX observations, the resulting financial planning interface felt automated and lacked the empathy essential for meaningful customer engagement
Concept 2: investigated how a single focus card combined with imagery could enhance user motivation. This approach proved more intuitive, avoided competing with other savings products, and created a distinctly human experience that customers could anticipate and connect with emotionally