Vanguard
ROLE
UI/UX Designer
TIMELINE
Sep 2025 – Dec 2025
LOCATION
Chapel Hill, NC
OVERVIEW
This case study focuses on my work redesigning Vanguard’s Digital Advisor “Year in Review” feature for investors aged 50+. The existing experience allowed for useful data about retirement progress, but many users opened it hoping for reassurance and instead felt confused or unsure what to do next.
Across the semester, I worked on this product from research through wireframes and high-fidelity design in MEJO 581. My final solution reframes Year in Review as a guided narrative, from past to present to future, with an actionable checklist and a visual system that serves both newer and experienced investors.
THE CHALLENGE
🗒 Summary️
Year in Review is meant to show investors how their retirement plan performed over the past year and what they can do next. Our research with adults 50+ revealed a gap between intent and reality. Users opened the feature looking for clarity and reassurance, but often ran into “underfunded” labels, dense charts, and a checklist that didn’t clearly translate into concrete steps. Instead of feeling confident, many left more anxious and uncertain.
👩🏼💻 My Role
As a student designer for this project, I was responsible for translating our class’s research into a coherent product story and interface. I synthesized usability findings, persona and audience work, card sort results, and user flows, then led the redesign of the overall narrative structure, the 2025 action checklist, and a set of visual overlays and advanced graphs designed to work for a wide range of investment comfort levels.
⚡️ Existing Issues
The original experience had several systemic problems:
No cohesive story. Users jumped quickly into underfunded statuses and charts without context.
Passive checklist. The to-do list felt overwhelming and abstract; CTAs didn’t map cleanly to real actions.
Confusing next steps. Users weren’t sure which tasks mattered, how they were related, or where they would go when they clicked.
One-size-fits-none visuals. Some charts felt too advanced for less experienced investors; for others, they felt too simplistic and lacked depth or explanation.
Collectively, these issues meant that Year in Review was summarizing the past more than it was guiding the future.
GOALS
🗒 Summary️
The primary goal of my redesign was to turn a static report into a guided story with clear actions. Specifically, I set out to:
Restructure the flow into a logical narrative arc (What to expect → Year at a glance → Progress → Investments → Next steps).
Redesign the checklist so that it contains meaningful, grouped tasks with clear CTAs and a sense of progress.
Introduce visual explanations and overlays that make complex financial concepts approachable for newer investors, while offering more advanced graphs and breakdowns for experienced users who want detail.
💡 Guiding Questions
To stay grounded in user needs, I focused on questions such as:
How can we help a 50+ user feel oriented and reassured before they see any numbers?
How do we clearly show what happened this year, where they stand now, and what they can do next?
How can we support both “explain this simply” and “show me the details” without overwhelming the interface?
How do we make the checklist feel like a real, doable plan instead of a wall of links?
RESEARCH
📊 Usability Testing & Listening Sessions
Before beginning design, our class conducted moderated usability testing on Vanguard’s existing Year in Review prototype. Participants completed a 45-minute task-based session using a clickable Figma prototype, supported by think-aloud verbalization and post-test surveys.
We also conducted 15-minute listening sessions with adults aged 50+ to better understand real-world attitudes, anxieties, and behavioral patterns related to retirement planning and digital finance.
My primary participant was a 59-year-old semi-retired investor who was generally comfortable using digital tools but did not consider himself a financial expert (a profile that closely matched the broader 50+ population we targeted). Across sessions, participants consistently expressed a strong need for simplicity. My participant explicitly wanted financial explanations to be “explained like I’m five,” reinforcing how overwhelming even standard investment language can feel for users approaching retirement. There was a lot of anxiety around market volatility and shrinking timelines until retirement, highlighting that emotional confidence was just as important as data comprehension.
Trust was a main focus, with participants valuing recognizable brands like Vanguard and preferring straightforward text summaries over abstract visuals, which some described as reducing the perceived professionalism of the experience. Participants also expressed appreciation for progress indicators and clear goal messages.
However, despite this positive feedback, multiple usability breakdowns were identified. Navigation was a major issue. Participants struggled to locate where the Year in Review lived within the dashboard and felt disconnected once the flow transitioned from summaries into the checklist. The sudden change from data review to next steps created confusion about what actions were expected and how those actions connected back to goals. One participant said, “If I look at this checklist, I’m getting a little confused,” while another added, “This feels overwhelming…I don’t know how those links work or where they go.” The pre-filled checkmarks further added confusion, as users interpreted them as already-completed tasks rather than actionable next steps.
Participants also noted frustration with financial terminology and insufficient context for charts. While more experienced investors asked for deeper breakdowns of portfolio changes and projections, newer investors struggled to interpret even high-level metrics. The participant I tested noted that “For a more sophisticated investor, this isn’t very informative,” highlighting the challenge of serving a wide range of expertise in a single place.
Based on these findings, our team decided on several recommendations that guided the redesign: streamline navigation and make Year in Review more discoverable, replace ambiguous visuals with clearer data graphics, introduce contextual explanations and overlay definitions for financial jargon, restructure the checklist to allow for action rather than completion, provide optional educational overlays for users who want deeper insights, and strengthen the narrative connection between past results and future decisions.
Our full findings from our usability testings can be found below.
👤 Audience Analysis, Persona & Empathy Map
As a group, we then focused on understanding how different 50+ investors emotionally and cognitively experience Vanguard’s Year in Review. Instead of treating this audience as one single user type, we identified four primary investor mindsets that encompass varying confidence levels, risk tolerance, and informational needs across the pre-retirement and early-retirement journey. This helped me think more holistically about who I was designing for by understanding how they think, what they worry about, and what they’re really trying to get out of this experience.
The first group, the Progress Validator (ages 40–52), includes users who have fairly stable incomes and want to figure out if they're on the right track. They come to the Year in Review looking for reassurance that their efforts mattered and wanting to understand where growth came from, whether that was personal contributions, employer matches, or the market itself. They process information best when progress is broken into simple, clear pieces, which influenced my emphasis on contribution comparisons and easy-to-read progress summaries that help users feel back in control.
The second group, the Risk-Aware Balancer (ages 50–60), often manages multiple accounts and is much more focused on avoiding big mistakes than chasing high returns. When reviewing their finances, they scan first for signs of instability (things like volatility, allocation drift, or increased risk) before looking at overall growth. This group helped shape the rebalancing features in my redesign, including making allocation alignment more visible and adding overlays that explain when and why rebalancing occurs.
The third group, the Tax-and-Fee Optimizer (ages 50–64), includes financially experienced investors with higher balances who want to see proof that their planning decisions are working. They naturally compare numbers, look for efficiency, and want to quantify savings from low-cost investing or tax-efficient strategies. Designing for this group pushed me to include optional deeper breakdowns, contribution sourcing details, and overlay views that offer more advanced analysis without overwhelming beginners.
Finally, the Income-Future Worrier (60+) is often at or near retirement and prioritizes financial stability above everything else. Their biggest concern is whether withdrawals are sustainable and if current spending will harm their long-term security. They want reassurance rather than growth. This mindset led to focusing on goal-status gauges, spending projections, and easy-to-understand explanations that validate financial safety rather than market excitement.
Mapping these four perspectives reminded me that the Year in Review needed to serve a wide spectrum of experience, not just one average investor. My solution became a dual-layer approach of a simple default experience for reassurance paired with optional overlays and advanced views for users who want more depth.
Our audience analysis is included below.
Using these insights, I developed a behavioral persona named Oliver Johnson, a cautious, digitally comfortable saver approaching retirement. Oliver wants confidence that his savings will last, feels anxious when encountering volatile markets or overly technical explanations, prefers high-level summaries over dense analytics, relies heavily on Vanguard’s credibility for guidance, and appreciates feeling in control and knowing next steps.
I paired this persona with a full empathy map (“Thinks, Says, Does, Feels”) that illustrated tensions between his concerns and behaviors. This synthesis reinforced that my design needed to prioritize guidance, financial understanding, and strong storytelling.
📎 Card Sorts, Structure & Flows
Following research synthesis, our group conducted card sorting exercises to reorganize all Year-in-Review content into more natural conceptual groupings. Using hand-drawn note cards, we categorized features such as the likelihood-of-success gauge, timelines, rebalancing summaries, contribution charts, checklist items, next-steps cards, and tooltips.
This process revealed where content felt connected, and where the original flow separated related information in ways that confused users. Insights from the card sorts informed my site structure diagram and user flows built in FigJam, where I prioritized a narrative progression that moved from summary → context → explanation → investment actions → next steps.
DESIGN PROCESS
🏛️ Restructuring the Story
The biggest shift in my redesign was structural. Instead of dropping users immediately into dense graphs and performance metrics, the experience now begins with a “What to Expect” orientation screen that establishes understanding before allowing for complexity. This screen introduces a simple visual roadmap (Summary → Progress → Investments → Next Steps) and explains each section in one sentence so users understand the purpose of the review before engaging. It also clearly states the review timeframe (“This review covers January 1 – December 31, 2024”) and offers two primary entry paths: Begin Review or Skip to Checklist, giving users control over how they choose to explore.
From there, the flow moves intentionally from high-level understanding to greater detail. Users first see a Year-at-a-Glance summary with notable highlights, followed by a Timeline & Milestones screen that visualizes join year, current year, and retirement target on a clear horizontal timeline. This framing gives a comprehensive overview of a user's financial standing before introducing more complicated financial concepts like likelihood of success, contributions, and investment mix.
To minimize confusion when users jump out of the flow to complete actions, I designed confirmation overlays that the user was leaving the checklist screen. I also introduced a dashboard checklist widget that keeps actionable steps visible across sessions so users never feel disoriented or lose their place. Together, these structural decisions maintain a consistent narrative thread: past performance → current status → future actions.
In addition, in order to minimize back-and-forth navigation and enhance the storytelling aspect of the redesign, I updated the pagination to have the titles of each section instead of just vague small circles with no indication of where the user is at.
The full new flow is embedded below.
🖋️ Wireframes & Structure
I began the design phase with hand-drawn sketches to explore information hierarchy, content grouping, and progressive disclosure across the flow. These sketches were then translated into grayscale wireframes in Figma, focusing on the layout, accessibility considerations such as font size and spacing, and placement of overlays. I also I created a complete flow diagram in FigJam that documented the primary review path, optional overlay branches, and checklist action loops. This process ensured that all screens would connect into a cohesive experience that turned the Year in Review into a story framed as the past, present, and future. I aimed to avoid confusing navigation patterns while giving the user all the context they need to navigate through the Year in Review, giving them full freedom to see what they needed.
Below is an image of my initial paper sketches of each screen.
The low-fidelity wireframes are embedded below.
🎨 UI Kit & Style Guide
A lightweight UI kit was developed to align the redesign with Vanguard’s visual identity while prioritizing accessibility for the 50+ audience. The color palette is centered on Vanguard's red for emphasis, brand recognition, and charts, paired with similar warm-colored neutrals, with consistent success and warning accents for status states (i.e. green and red, specifically for balance changes). Accessible sans-serif typography (Inter) with larger base font sizes and generous line spacing improves legibility for older users, and was the most consistent font I could find with the existing Vanguard typography. Reusable components were built for checklist cards, overlay modals, and tag-style labels to ensure as much visual consistency as possible across all screens. The graphics, generated primarily with AI, were created to remain consistent with the primary brand colors and relevant screens but also bring some variation and visual appeal to frames with less content on them.
🧾 Redesigning the Checklist
After a complete redesign of the flow, the second major focus was transforming the checklist from a passive list of links into a true action-planning tool. The redesigned checklist screen is presented as “Your Checklist for 2025” with the subtitle “Simple steps you can take today to strengthen your retirement plan and feel more confident about the year ahead.” Tasks are grouped into categories based on user goals rather than technical functions: Strengthen Your Plan (increase contributions, review retirement age assumptions), Update Your Information (verify income and expenses, link outside accounts), and Explore Tools & Support (use the Goal Optimizer or schedule a call with an advisor).
Each checklist item includes a short description explaining why it matters, a specific CTA such as “Update contributions” or “Link accounts,” and a completion checkbox so users can track their progress. Confirmation overlays explain where each CTA leads and let users knw that they’ll return to the checklist afterward. Progress is also surfaced directly on the dashboard with a checklist widget, giving them a sense action and accomplishment. This redesign addresses user feedback that the original checklist felt overwhelming and unclear by turning scattered links into a guided, trackable action plan.
📊 Insights & Graphs
The visual redesign aimed to accommodate both newer investors seeking reassurance and more experienced users wanting detailed insights. I established a consistent dual-layer pattern across screens: an easily understandable default view along with an optional deeper explanation via overlays or advanced visualizations.
This structure allows for both an overview and more complexity, if the user so chooses. For example, Goal Status now displays a simplified gauge (“68%; on track, but small changes can improve this”) alongside a link to the overlay “How do I improve my chances?” which explains the underlying simulations and highlights key factors such as contributions, retirement timeline, and spending assumptions. Contributions presents a straightforward comparison ("You planned to save $6,500 and contributed $4,500; 70% of your goal”) with per-account bars, with an expandable overlay breaking down contribution sources and a timeline, shown in the design below.
Investment Mix uses a labeled donut chart tied to the user’s “all-index” and “moderate risk” settings, while the overlay “How did this align with my risk attitude?” explains Vanguard’s risk spectrum and allocation logic in simple terms. Rebalancing pairs a relevant visual and the stat “We rebalanced your portfolio three times this year” with an overlay that explains what rebalancing means, when it happens, why it happened for the particular user, and why it protects long-term stability.
This layered approach keeps the default experience simple while still providing meaningful depth for users who want it.
🖼️ High-Fidelity Mockups & Prototype
The finalized solution includes 20+ high-fidelity screens covering the full flow: dashboard entry, orientation/What-to-Expect, Year-at-a-Glance summary, Timeline & Milestones, Goal Status, Contributions, Investment Mix, Rebalancing, Balance Change, Final Encouragement, redesigned Checklist, and the Next Steps Library. These were assembled into a fully interactive prototype demonstrating navigation, overlays, hover states, checklist loops, and dashboard integrations. The prototype formed the basis of my final pitch and serves as my final product.
The high-fidelity design file is embedded below.
The full prototype is embedded below.
THE PITCH
🗒 Summary️
Alongside completing this project, we also got the privilege of being able to pitch our redesigns live to the Vanguard team. With a five minute presentation and Q&A session, I was able to synthesize my learnings, my design process, and prototype screens into a cohesive story to pitch my redesign.
Embedded below is my slide deck.
FINAL THOUGHTS
💡 Learnings
This project taught me just how useful narrative structure can be in financial UX. By reorganizing the flow to start with context and a timeline, then move into high-level summaries before offering deeper detail, my goal was to make complex financial information feel more like a story, giving users an understanding of their past, their present, and what they can do to achieve their goals in the future. The Year in Review should feel like a rewarding, cohesive experience that is easy to follow, and I hope my redesigned flow accomplishes just that.
The experience also taught me how important it is to design for a range of expertise, not an average user. Many 50+ investors might be financially experienced but still want reassurance and something easy to understand. Giving users a clean default experience with optional depth allowed me to serve that wide range without sacrificing usability for either group.
Finally, redesigning the checklist into an actionable tool was one of the changes I was most proud of. Changing the experience from a report to actively guiding users toward next steps with clickable checkboxes helped make the product into something that supports moving forward; the user flow supports continuous action rather than links that are hard to access and keep track of.
If I had more time, I’d love to test alternative data visualizations (such as stacked bars versus donut charts), further personalize the strengths and checklist sections, and validate the updated checklist flow with additional 50+ users to keep refining clarity and actionability even more.
Overall, I'm incredibly grateful to Professor Ruel, the MEJO 581 class, Vanguard, and the opportunity to work on such an interesting and all-encompassing design challenge.