Architecting Behavior Change

The paradox of choice is a persistent challenge in personal finance. Working Americans must balance debt repayment, emergency savings, and long-term investing—often without clear guidance on how to allocate limited resources. Because financial decisions compound over time, suboptimal strategies can have lasting consequences.

To address this, Candidly developed a personalized optimization engine as part of its financial wellness expansion. The solution analyzes account balances and spending patterns to generate individualized allocation strategies. I led the research and design of this B2B2C product, translating complex modeling into clear, actionable guidance for end users.

A wide-ranging set of interviews was conducted to uncover patterns in employee financial behaviors and challenges across Candidly’s partner organizations. Participants represented four behavioral cohorts defined by financial app usage, with conversations centered on existing tools and decision-making processes. These insights laid the groundwork for the initial prototype and subsequent user testing.

Financial decisions are rarely rational. They’re shaped by emotion, cognitive load, loss aversion, and present bias. In our research, we saw that the structure of information consistently influenced behavior more than the content itself.

Rather than simply educating users, we designed the experience as a behavioral system — applying principles from behavioral economics and cognitive psychology to reduce friction, increase agency, and guide users toward financially beneficial actions. The goal was not persuasion, it was alignment:

• Align user intent with long-term outcomes
• Align product architecture with cognitive realities
• Align transitive trust signals with user confidence

The mockups below work to operationalize the key research insights into a tightening behavioral pathway:

• The landing screen establishes trust — surfacing recognizable partner relationships and positioning the tool as guided, credible, and secure.
• Next, the overview introduces transparency, outlining the process and clarifying expected impact.
• The goal-setting screen then reduces cognitive load by focusing users on a single objective and delivering just-in-time education at the moment of choice.

Together, the sequence moves users from hesitation to informed commitment to meaningful financial action.

User testing supplemented our preliminary, attitudinal research, and highlighted two additional challenges in the flow: time-to-value (for first-time patrons) and the added involvement of partner offers on the user dashboard.

Balancing data collection—required to deliver personalized guidance—with surfacing value early in the onboarding experience proved challenging. To address this, we introduced an interim results screen (the first value milestone) that surfaced preliminary savings estimates before asking users for sensitive personal and financial information.

Perception matters and highlighting small wins during onboarding can make the difference between a first-time user pushing through the friction or abandoning the flow.

The dashboard sat at the intersection of two competing priorities: driving visibility and activation of partner financial offers, while helping users make clear progress toward their financial goals with minimal friction.

Early usability testing revealed a key disconnect — users did not intuitively understand how partner offers contributed to debt payoff progress. As a result, offers were perceived as promotional rather than instrumental, increasing cognitive load and reducing trust.

To address this, the final design reframed partner offers as progress accelerators rather than standalone promotions. This included:

• Embedding offers within goal modules instead of isolating them in promotional space
• Explicitly labeling the impact of each action (e.g., “This could reduce your payoff timeline by X months”)
• Reducing competing dashboard elements to emphasize a single recommended next step
• Prioritizing progressive disclosure to maintain simplicity while preserving partner visibility

This approach preserved revenue-driving placements while reinforcing clarity and forward momentum, resulting in a dashboard that felt less like a marketplace and more like a guided financial progress tool.

Quantitative results (based on a final round of user testing)

• 19% increase in partner revenue-driving interactions
• 17% increase in perceived trustworthiness of the platform
• 16% decrease in time on task (financial goal-setting)
• +12 point improvement in System Usability Scale (SUS)

Behavioral drivers behind the lift

• Clear next-step framing reduced decision paralysis
• Goal-linked partner context increased perceived relevance
• Simplified hierarchy improved scan efficiency

The final experience translated behavioral research into a scalable dashboard framework – aligning user motivation, partner visibility, and measurable product growth.