Launching a new investment category at Stable Money through phased delivery, trust-first UX, and post-launch iteration.
Role
Senior Product Designer · Sole
Duration
Jul 2025 – Oct 2025
Team
1 PM • 1 Business • 3 engineers
I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR
research synthesis
defining UX direction
flow design and IA
end-to-end product experience
trust and education layers
post-launch improvements and feature thinking
TIMELINE
PROJECT TIMELInE
METHOD
USER INTERVIEWS
Understand mental models, objections, and confidence gaps.
Key finding
Users were curious about gold, but not clear on the format
Silver was much less understood than gold
Trust and reversibility mattered more than advanced features
Users wanted guidance, not too many choices upfront
METHOD
Competitor analysis
Map how digital gold, ETFs, and other platforms frame the category.
Key finding
Uses Groww for convenience; found Zerodha Coin’s UI tedious
Overreliance on Influencers: Selection of MFs often based on YouTube over data-driven advice.
Poor Rebalancing Behavior: Users either don’t rebalance or want “someone else” to do it.
Auto-Rebalancing Recommendation Engine: Periodic nudges with pre-suggested ratios.
SIP Optimizer: Help users understand daily/weekly SIP benefits (if any) using calculators.
Commodity Bundles: “Gold + Silver Diversification” MF recommendations as preset baskets.
Tax Ignorance may lead to poor experience at redemption time.
METHOD
Market research
Understand where Gold & Silver could sit in Stable Money’s broader portfolio story.
Key finding
No existing product combined SEBI regulation, no Demat requirement, SIP capability, and expert-managed allocation in one place. That was the white space.
User Personas — built from interviews
Built after interviews — not before. Each shaped a distinct communication angle and design priority.
Persona 1
Long-Term Wealth Builder
Persona 2
Inflation Hedge Believer
Persona 3
Equity Diversifier
Persona 4
Goal-Based Investor
Defining the Opportunity
Make first-time investing feel safE
From discovery, we framed the challenge as making Gold & Silver mutual funds feel simple, trustworthy, and actionable for users who were familiar with safer investments, but not yet confident in this category.
How might we make Gold & Silver mutual funds feel simple, trustworthy, and actionable for users who were familiar with safer investments, but not yet confident in this category?
Initial Product Design
Designing the first usable investment journey
From August to October, we focused on shaping the first usable version of the product. That meant getting the information architecture, flow logic, and page responsibilities right before we went deep into later enhancements like personalized mastheads or collections.
Information architecture
I mapped the full journey before designing the details: entry points, discovery, KYC, investment, passbook, and post-investment states.
ENTRY
Discovery
KYC
Investment
Post-investment
Landing page objectives — what this surface should & shouldn't do
Before designing the landing page, defined its job explicitly. A lot of later decisions — content order, trust markers, CTA placement — came directly from this framework.
The page should
Answer "what is this?" immediately
Explain the Gold+Silver basket clearly
Address safety and exit questions proactively
Show returns with context (CAGR, benchmark)
Build confidence before showing a CTA
Explain what KYC is and why it's needed
What it should not do:
Assume users know what a Gold MF is
List every investment mode upfront
Bury withdrawal info below the fold
Show raw numbers without framing
Push users to KYC before they understand the product
Drop users into a form mid-flow
This also shaped the critical KYC placement decision: should we ask for KYC before or after the user has chosen their investment amount?
Decision
KYC after amount selection — users are more committed after seeing their potential return. KYC as a gate before seeing any value felt like friction with no reward.
E2E screen design
full investment journey
Designed the complete journey across 5 surface areas. Every edge case documented before engineering handoff — payment failures, DigiLocker errors, bank verification failures, unit allocation delays.
Strategic pivot
phased delivery & GTM landing page
As engineering progressed, it became clear the full KYC + investment journey would take longer to build than the initial target date. Rather than waiting, we made a deliberate decision: launch in phases.
The first phase was a GTM landing page — not a placeholder, but a purposeful early surface to:
Phase 1
GTM / waitlist page
Phase 2
KYC journey
Phase 3
Full E2E journey
Why this was the right call
Shipping something valuable early — even if incomplete — meant we had real signal about user intent and confusion before the full product went live. It also let us onboard early adopters with a better first experience than a half-finished flow.
STAKEHOLDERS
Collaboration during design
Ashish Kumar · PM
Every edge case documented before engineering handoff. Scope filter: does this reduce support volume or increase CVR? Useful-but-not-urgent (Goal SIP, Step-Up SIP) → documented future scope, not lost.
Vaibhav Grover · Business
Anchored business goals: 12% attach rate by Dec, AUM targets. Pushed for sharper competitive differentiation → drove expansion of comparison table from Digital Gold only to Physical Gold + ETFs.
Better design because of that pushback.
Engineering
Heavy Cybrilla (MF infra) dependencies. Every known failure state had a designed UI: payment failure, DigiLocker error, BAV failure, mandate issues.
Same-day settlement
Mandate edge cases
KYC validation errors
Pre-launch QA
A LOT OF BUGS & issues
Screen-by-screen sign-off across lump sum and SIP flows. P0 = blocker, cannot ship.
Post-launch
Fixing What Was Breaking, Learning What Mattered
The three months post-launch were about keeping the product working, reading the real user signal, and resolving backend issues that were causing drop-off.
What users said
"Is there any lock-in?"
"Will I get fixed returns like FD?"
"Where does my money go?"
"What are the charges on withdrawal?"
"Why only Axis and UTI?"
Explain what KYC is and why it's needed
What it actually meant
Trust markers not prominent enough above fold
Product framing not landing for FD-first users
Axis/UTI fund names not positioned at the right moment
Exit load + expense ratio still causing anxiety
Fund selection rationale needed more surface area
The key insight
Users weren't rejecting the product — they were confused by it. Every support call was a design problem we hadn't yet solved on the screen. This directly informed the enhancement roadmap for Phase 5.
Backend & technical issues resolved
NEW PHASE
New Features & Enhancements
The three months post-launch were about keeping the product working, reading the real user signal, and resolving backend issues that were causing drop-off.
DEC 2025
PERSONLISATION
Personalised masthead — added in this phase
6 user states, each with a distinct headline and CTA. New user sees an education-first message. Invested user sees portfolio performance. Designed once the full IA was stable and we had real user cohort data to segment on.
JAN 2026
Collections module — simplifying investment entrY
Post-launch data showed users were confused by the number of investment modes available. Collections grouped them by mindset rather than product type, reducing decision paralysis.
Stakeholder compromise
Business wanted all SKUs visible. Collections became primary; 'View all options' secondary. Full discoverability without making it the opening move.
JAN 2026
KYC funnel improvements
KYC was the biggest drop-off point post-launch. Iterated on every step to reduce failure and friction.
Aadhaar step optimised
+0.5% in onboarding.
Modify KYC flow
+1% in onboarding.
Pending journey
27% CVR on nudge.
Jan–Feb 2026
Investment input page improvements
The amount input page was cluttered at launch. Several high-impact changes shipped over Jan–Feb.
Editable basket ratio visible on amount page → basket one-time orders 27% → 37%
Daily vs Monthly SIP UI revamp → daily SIP share grew 19% → 25.88%
Min daily SIP reduced to ₹100 → avg SIP amount doubled (₹109 → ₹197)
90:10 ratio display removed from amount screen (was causing confusion, not value)
Jan 2026
SIP cancellation — education-led friction
Cancellations spiked 20–25% on market-dip days.
Business instinct: add friction.
My approach: add education, preserve autonomy.
User taps 'Stop SIP' → asked: "What's making you stop?" (structured reason list)
"Need money?" → "Stopping your SIP doesn't give you cash. Redeem instead ↗"
"Bad returns?" → 5-year historical performance data shown before confirming cancel
Jan–Feb 2026
SIP rebalancing — transparency as a product feature
When the ratio changed (90:10 → revised split), ~6,800 SIP users' installment amounts would shift. A notification alone would destroy trust.
Design principle
Transparency is the product. Making expert management visible and legible — not just a marketing claim.
RESULT
What the Numbers Say
The three months post-launch were about keeping the product working, reading the real user signal, and resolving backend issues that were causing drop-off.
180%
Growth in AUM after
launch
3X
growth in investors within
2 months
2.5X
Increase in monthly
investments
1.8X
Increase in average
investment
Monthly SIP users
OCT to DEC • 4X increase
Daily SIP userS
OCT to DEC • 4.5X increase
Editable basket ratio on amount page
Basket one-time orders 27% → 37%
Daily vs Monthly SIP UI revamp
Daily SIP share 19% → 25.88%
Min daily SIP reduced to ₹100
Avg SIP amount ₹109 → ₹197
Pending KYC/order journey nudge
32% completed after nudge
Learnings
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1
Launching a New Category ≠ Launching a Perfect Product
2
Simplification Drives Adoption in Commodities
3
Users Want Delegation, Not Control
4
Customer Conversations Became the Real Brief
5
Business Urgency vs User Trust is a Tightrope
6
Timing the Launch Amplified Impact
7
Designing with Constraints, Not Around Them
"In fintech, the product earns trust or loses it the moment users think about getting their money back. If that moment is uncertain or surprising, users won't invest in the first place."