Fidelity Youth App
Senior Product Designer
I led the end-to-end design of the app’s investing experience, transforming a feature-led flow into an education-first approach—reducing risk, building parental trust, and driving 71% activation.
Visit the app stores for the Fidelity Youth App
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The problem
Teens desire financial literacy but lack resources.
They're interested in earning, managing cash flow, and saving for immediate goals like buying a car or going to college, as well as for significant life events like purchasing a home or planning for early retirement.
Some turn to online sources, but many lack responsible guidance for financial literacy.
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The solution
Tailoring content for teens at different financial literacy levels, with a focus on optimizing user experience. Additionally, ensuring parents can easily oversee teens' financial and investment activities.
Providing bite-sized learning opportunities contextually, such as cash spending insights, mini-onboarding for the first time investors, jargon busters and videos.
The goal was to help teens start investing while learning financial well-being in a safe and approachable environment.
We designed for a dual-user ecosystem: teens managing their first investments while parents provide guidance and oversight.
Research showed teens gravitate toward familiar brands but often overestimate their investing confidence.
We examined how other apps introduce investing concepts to younger audiences.
Early testing revealed that traditional investment terminology was confusing for teens.
We explored ways to make investment discovery feel more familiar, approachable, and educational.
The first concept introduced recognizable companies and simplified language to lower the barrier to investing.
We then explored thematic browsing inspired by patterns teens already know from app stores.
The final MVP used themed investment collections to help teens discover investments without financial jargon.
Our guiding principle was simple: educate first-time investors before empowering them to trade.
We introduced a guided learning path so teens could understand investing basics before making their first trade.
After launch, we expanded the experience to support teens progressing from their first investment toward portfolio building.
Future concepts explored tools like projections and recurring investments to help teens build long-term investing habits.
