VIZME
A Social, Smarter Way to Manage Money
A complete design of a mobile financial platform blending open banking, social interactions, and intuitive payment flows for Gen-Z and young professionals.
Project Overview
Role: UX/UI Designer, Product Researcher, Design System Lead.
Timeline: 12 months.
Team: Worked closely with a small product team, engineers, and the founders.
The Challenge
VIZME was a promising financial app lacking clarity, consistency, and a cohesive identity. Users wanted a fun, social payment experience but also needed trust, security, and clarity when handling financial data through open banking.
The Goal
Redesign the app to be:
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Instantly understandable
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Approachable and “social”
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Fast to use
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Visually unified
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Ready for MVP launch
What I Delivered
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Full end-to-end redesign
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New UX flows for onboarding, P2P payments, and financial tracking
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A playful but trustworthy visual identity
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Design system foundations
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Usability-tested prototypes
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MVP-scope final UI
User persona
Age: 24
Role: Student
Tech Level: High
Bio
Alex goes out with friends often and splits bills multiple times a week. He wants payments to be fast, simple, and fun, with emojis and GIFs that make transactions feel personal.
Goals
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Split bills quickly and without awkward moments
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Get a clear overview of who owes what at any time
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Enjoy fun, expressive interactions with GIFs/emojis
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Trust that payments are instant, accurate, and secure
Motivations
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Strengthen social connection in group activities
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Express personality through messages and reactions
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Experience smooth, frictionless financial flows
Pain Points
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Too many steps in current payment apps
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Interfaces feel boring, cold, or overly formal
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Bank linking is confusing or unclear
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Group expenses are hard to track and manage
USER PERSONA
Alex, The Social Splitter
“I want sending money to feel as quick and fun as messaging my friends.”
Research Insights
Methods Used
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User interviews
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Surveys
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Competitor analysis (Revolut, Monzo, N26, Venmo)
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Persona creation
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Usability testing on early prototypes
What I Found
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Users wanted personality, not another boring banking app.
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Payments needed to feel effortless 2 taps max.
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Open banking had to feel trustworthy and simple.
What I Found
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Users loved adding GIFs, emojis, and messages.
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The old UI reduced clarity and trust.
Personas
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The Social Splitter: Sends & requests money often, loves GIFs, hates friction.
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The Young Professional: Wants clean summaries, insights, and trustworthiness.
Key Findings
1. Payments need to feel effortless, not administrative.
Students want fast flows that feel like chatting, not managing spreadsheets.
2. Expression is essential.
Emojis, GIFs, reactions, and short messages make payments feel personal and social.
3. Trust and clarity must be built into the onboarding flow.
Bank linking caused hesitation clearer language and simple steps increase confidence.
4. Students often forget who owes what.
They want the app to automatically track group expenses and balances for them.
5. Existing apps feel “cold,” “boring,” or “too serious.”
This highlighted a strong opportunity for a more playful, human-centered experience.
6. Playful interactions increase engagement.
Reaction loops and expressive responses encourage repeat use, especially among friend groups.
We partnered with professors at a university in London, who helped us select a group of students matching our target demographic. We contacted them via email and invited them to complete a short online questionnaire and test a figma prototype. The responses gave us clear insights into their frustrations, expectations, and emotional needs, which guided our key findings and early design decisions.
VIZME needs to solve
Two core problems:
1. Payments lack personality and emotional context.
Money exchanges feel dry, formal, or awkward, making users less likely to engage or return. Features like reactions, GIFs, and messages are expected, but most payment tools don’t support them.
2. Essential flows still feel complicated and untrustworthy.
Users want frictionless onboarding, clear bill tracking, and confidence when connecting their bank without long steps or confusing terminology.
UX Flows & Wireframes
To define how VIZME should work, I mapped the core user journeys and explored them through low-fidelity wireframes. These flows helped validate the foundation of the product speed, clarity, trust, and expressive interactions before moving into visual design.
Friends & Invite Flow
This flow defines VIZME’s social graph: searching for friends, inviting new users, viewing contacts, and managing friend relationships. It establishes the core connections that make social payments possible.
Send Money Flow
Designed for speed and clarity, this flow captures the full journey of sending money selecting a friend, entering an amount, adding GIFs or emojis, and handling success or failure states.
See & React Flow
This flow introduces VIZME’s emotional layer reactions, GIF replies, message interactions, and playful story-like moments. It transforms payments from transactional to conversational.
Hi-Fi Screens
The high-fidelity screens bring VIZME’s visual direction, interaction patterns, and brand personality together into a polished, realistic product experience. These screens demonstrate how the design principles translate into actual UI: playful reactions, clear financial hierarchy, simple flows, and a trustworthy visual system. They reflect the final look and feel of the app across key moments, from sending money to reacting to friends and completing onboarding.
Onboarding & Verification Flow
The onboarding flow is designed to feel simple, friendly, and trustworthy important for a financial app aimed at young users. Each screen focuses on one clear action, with helpful validation and plain-language guidance to reduce friction. From personal details to phone verification and bank linking, the flow builds confidence step by step, making a normally stressful process feel smooth and approachable.
Friends & Invite Flow
This flow builds the social foundation of VIZME. Users can easily browse or search their contacts, see who is already on the app, and invite friends with one tap. Clear states show verified vs. unverified contacts, helping users understand who they can interact with. The flow also includes simple modals for blocking or managing friends, keeping control and privacy transparent. The experience is designed to feel lightweight, social, and effortless mirroring the messaging apps users already know.
Send Money Flow
The send money flow focuses on speed and clarity while keeping the experience fun and expressive. Users begin by selecting a friend, entering an amount, and optionally adding a GIF or emoji to personalise the payment. The flow reduces friction with simple layouts, clear CTA buttons, and predictable steps. Bank selection and verification are integrated seamlessly so the user never feels lost. Error states such as payment failures or unsupported banks are designed to be informative without causing frustration, guiding users toward a quick resolution. Overall, the goal is to make sending money feel as natural as sending a message.
Visual Design Direction
This section defines how VIZME should look and feel. After mapping the core flows, I explored the visual foundations of the product colours, typography, components, and interaction style to create a UI that feels social, expressive, and trustworthy. These decisions shaped the identity and set the tone for the final high-fidelity design.
1. Playful & Human
VIZME makes payments feel social and expressive, integrating emojis, GIFs, and reactions to bring personality into every interaction.
2. Simple & Clear
The interface prioritizes quick understanding and effortless actions, reducing friction in sending money, splitting bills, and navigating the app.
3. Trustworthy by Design
Clean layouts, consistent patterns, and transparent language help users feel safe and confident when handling financial tasks.
Reflection & Learnings
What Worked Well
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Emotional design made a measurable difference GIFs, reactions, and playful UI elements increased user excitement.
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Students responded positively to the expressive payment flow, calling it “fun” and “way friendlier than banking apps.”
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Breaking onboarding into small, focused steps improved clarity and reduced hesitation around verification.
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Early wireframes helped the team align quickly on flow, hierarchy, and trust-building moments.
What I’d Improve Next
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Explore deeper personalisation in the Payment Story (themes, stickers, mood-based reactions).
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Continue simplifying the bank-linking experience, especially around error states.
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Test group payments and shared expenses to understand real-world usability.
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Run longer-term engagement tests to measure how expressive interactions impact daily app usage.
Graphic play
