Project Overview:
CONTEXT
Upward's D2C credit builder worked, but the bigger opportunity was B2B. Money transfer apps and similar companies could offer credit building through Upward without building any infrastructure themselves. The existing product could not support that pivot, and every partner had a different platform, entry point, and user base. I led the full redesign as the company's first full-time hire outside the founding team.
APPROACH
I started by identifying what had worked in the D2C product: trust, transparency, and progressive disclosure of financial information. Those principles carried over. Everything else was rebuilt.
Research from the D2C phase informed the redesign directly. Interviews with real users, email surveys, and beta test sessions showed us where people got stuck, most often at KYC. For newcomers to the US, being asked for unfamiliar documents while navigating a financial system they were still learning was a friction point we could not ignore. The redesign simplified those flows, reduced unnecessary screens, and prefilled information from partner data where possible to make onboarding as fast and clear as possible.
The language and financial education throughout the product was rewritten for clarity, plain enough for someone new to the US financial system without losing trust signals that made the product feel legitimate.
For every new partner I led a personal onboarding call, walked their team through the product, and worked with our frontend developer to implement their brand guidelines. I was the primary design contact for every partner we signed.
OUTCOME
Western Union became Upward's largest and most successful partner. The modular system built for this redesign also directly enabled the rapid launch of Upward's card product, giving the team a design foundation that would have otherwise taken months to build from scratch.
REFLECTION
This project taught me that a complete redesign is not the same as starting from zero. Having something to reference, even something that did not fully work, is an advantage if you use it correctly. The D2C product showed me where to hold firm on trust and clarity, and where to rebuild entirely for scale. Being the first full-time hire meant the work went beyond delivering screens. It meant establishing how design operated at the company, from creating Figma conventions that the team could build on, to design systems that would outlast the initial launch."
