Problem

The Trim Tips library flow of the Trim Expenses session of Money Canvas had not been updated since it's creation in 2020 and through user and coach research, we discovered that there were a number of opportunities to improve the flow.

• Heavy Cognitive Load for both coaches and users: Coaches currently need to refer to user's budget details to provide relevant tips, which is very taxing. For users, this becomes a box-checking task as opposed to an open discovery, leading to less organic and less fruitful discussions.
  Redundancy in experience: To add on to the previous point, the current trim tips experience is repetitive and taxing for the user. Coaches typically flip over a bunch of dense, content heavy tip cards and let the user's read through them. This led to users checking out very early on and not fully getting the most out of the experience.

• Shallow Conversation Occurrences: Coaches find it more difficult to facilitate deep discussions while also navigating the trim tips library, leading them to default to the self-service nature of the design.

• Inconsistent Experience/Lack of Guardrails: The trim tips library section lacks structure in facilitation and talk-track guidelines, resulting in unintended variability and compromise in user experience as a result. Each coach has different interpretations and ways to facilitate, leading to problems in scaling and delivering a consistent design experience.

Solution

I conducted preliminary user interviews with the coaches to discover early pain points with the current Trim Tips Library section. I discovered a number of important problems from those interviews, diverged to discover various inspirations for design solutions, and settled on a fun, gamified but guard-railed design flow that provided coaches with a more guided facilitation and users a more focused, bite-sized experience.

Animations & Microinteractions

Since Money Canvas is a very non-traditional product in the financial space, I was able to flex my creative freedom by implementing new, engaging animations and microinteractions as a way to embody the Money Canvas mission. It's all about serving the users, celebrating their victories, and mitigating their anxieties.

Outcome

We successfully shipped a series of high-fidelity features focused on transforming the coaching experience through immersive animations and responsive micro-interactions. By integrating gamified visual feedback loops throughout the session flow, we increased average session depth by 6 minutes, allowing users to dive deeper into their long-term financial habits. These interactive elements didn't just add flair; they drove a 7% growth in actionable "Trim Tips," effectively turning verbal coaching advice into tangible, trackable tasks for the user. This motion-forward approach earned a 92% approval rating from our coaching staff and led to the creation of a new, scalable Design Ops framework that has significantly streamlined our ability to roll out future animation-heavy features.