UX / UI / PROTOTYPING / USER TESTING
Octopus
Octopus Wealth is a financial planning tool designed to help users understand and make the most of their assets — from investments to retirement plans.
Built around the concept of a 'Lifeline', the product maps a user's key financial information and life milestones onto a single interactive timeline, giving them personalised, calculated insights to help improve their financial situation and work towards their goals.
Designing the Lifeline experience
Tasked by the product team to design the full experience around the Lifeline concept — from UX strategy and user journey mapping through to UI design, prototyping, and a responsive component library.
Working closely with an internal team who provided prior research and financial knowledge, the role also extended to designing an internal client portal with data visualisation and dashboard views.
Challenge
Making the Lifeline interactive on mobile
Solution
A complex financial timeline needed to work compellingly in portrait mobile orientation without overwhelming the user. The solution was a zoomed Lifeline interaction that used the full screen surface, with horizontal scroll triggering contextual detail panels — keeping the experience focused and navigable without compromise.
Challenge
Delivering real value, not just data collection
Solution
The tool risked feeling like a lead generation gimmick rather than a genuinely useful product. To counter this, a detailed matrix of advice was built — mapped to real calculations from user inputs — so every user received tailored, actionable insights regardless of whether they became a customer.
Challenge
Designing responsively across desktop and mobile
Solution
The tool needed to work seamlessly across screen sizes, with the added complexity of adapting an existing desktop product to mobile. A responsive-ready component library was built in Sketch from the start, making new screens faster to produce and ensuring consistency across every breakpoint.
Research-informed, prototype-driven
Starting from existing UX research provided by the Octopus Wealth team, the work began with persona canvases and a user journey map to identify bottlenecks and opportunities.
From there, the process moved into iterative design and prototyping — particularly around the Lifeline interaction, which required multiple explorations to get right. Principle was used extensively for interaction prototyping, with Sketch as the primary design and component tool for handover.
Sketch
UI design and responsive component library
Principle
Interaction and transition prototyping
User Journey Mapping
Built from existing internal UX research
A financial tool that earns trust before asking for anything
The Lifeline experience gave Octopus Wealth a meaningful first touchpoint with potential customers — one that delivered genuine value through personalised, calculated insights rather than just capturing data.
2
Products designed
Responsive
Views shipped
1
Component library created