Mogo is a self-directed investing app designed for Gen Z, focusing on long-term wealth building inspired by Warren Buffett’s principles. It simplifies value investing by offering only essential tools and quality education, shifting the focus to long-term investments without the distractions of high-risk speculative trading.
In May 2024, as the Lead Product Designer, I led the transformation of Mogo into a SaaS product, transitioning it from a free to a subscription-based model while maintaining steady user growth and engagement.
I designed intuitive onboarding flows to communicate the new value proposition, integrated educational tools, and introduced AI-driven features — all tailored to meet the needs of Gen Z investors. The result was an impactful experience that encourages long-term investing and empowers users to achieve their financial goals.
"Who do you think are the clients with the best performance?
It’s often the ones who forgot their passwords and call after decades."
A portfolio manager on our team has seen this firsthand. He recalled clients who simply “forgot” about their portfolios for decades. Ironically, these were the ones who consistently achieved the best performance.
Studies support this insight. Investors who stick to long-term strategies, such as holding an S&P 500 index fund, tend to outperform those who frequently trade or chase trends.
According to research by DALBAR, over a 20-year period, the average investor achieved an annual return of just 2.6%, compared to the 8.2% return from simply investing in the S&P 500 index.
This reinforces that the disciplined, long-term approach championed by Warren Buffett delivers superior results.
Despite the clear advantages of long-term investing, many investors struggle to adopt this approach. To understand why, we collaborated with our Customer Service and Data Analytics teams to gather feedback from existing users and analyze current trading habits within the app.
This research uncovered key patterns and barriers that helped us empathize with user frustrations, reframe our strategy, and pinpoint the primary pain points preventing users from committing to long-term strategies:
To address these challenges, we focused on creating an experience that:
With these insights, we set our design objective: to empower users to make better, informed decisions by simplifying the investment process and providing tools that support long-term strategies.
To achieve this, we designed a set of strategic solutions aimed at reducing impulsive behaviors, enhancing clarity, and driving long-term investment engagement:
Wealth calculator to understand the long-term impact
To make long-term investing more tangible, we introduced the Wealth Calculator during onboarding. This interactive tool allows users to experiment with different annual return rates, helping them visualize the power of compounding over time. By enabling users to set realistic financial goals upfront and keeping those goals visible throughout their journey, we guide them toward smarter decisions that align with long-term success.
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Education and awareness before buying
Most trading apps focus on streamlining trades, as their revenue relies on commissions per transaction. With our SaaS model, we took a different approach by embedding educational prompts throughout the trading process. Before finalizing a purchase, users receive quick insights on what constitutes a true investment and are encouraged to reflect on whether their actions are strategic or speculative.
While this intentional friction might seem counterintuitive to a seamless trading experience, it adds value by encouraging users to pause, reflect, and make more thoughtful, long-term choices.
Stocks categorization based on behavior
Instead of solely tracking stocks by industries or sectors, we revamped stock performance tracking to reflect user behavior. Stocks are now categorized based on whether users conducted research or acted impulsively during the trading process. By visually demonstrating the long-term benefits of thoughtful investing over speculative actions, this feature inspires users to adopt more disciplined, research-driven investment strategies, fostering sustainable financial growth.
Education that delivers value and captures attention
To make investing approachable for Gen Z, we crafted bite-sized educational content and interactive quizzes that simplify complex financial concepts, making learning both fun and impactful. This approach captures short attention spans while delivering valuable insights that encourage smarter investing and deeper engagement with the app.
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Driving user engagement through regular product updates
We introduced a product update section and shared release notes on our Discord channel to keep users informed and engaged. Regular updates not only highlight new features but also reinforce our commitment to consistent improvement, fostering a stronger connection with both the app and its community.
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Streamlined feedback collection for iterative improvements
As a product designer, I advocated the importance of collecting user feedback on newly launched features. To streamline this process, we implemented tools like shake-to-give-feedback, which instantly notifies our team via Slack. This system ensures we quickly gather actionable insights, enabling us to identify and address pain points faster and refine the user experience effectively.
Next steps: Integrating AI for better research
To address users' struggles with applying value investing principles, we’re collaborating with Finchat to integrate AI-powered analysis tools. Features like an investing co-pilot aim to simplify complex research and provide insights typically reserved for experts. While we’ve released initial iterations, they haven’t fully met our goal of solving the pain point of enabling users to conduct comprehensive value investing research and trading. Our focus remains on identifying the best AI solutions to make advanced investing strategies accessible to all users.
With the team’s effort, we successfully transitioned to a SaaS model, supported by improved communication through the onboarding process and various channels. The results of this transition have been positive, with indications of user engagement and satisfaction validating the new approach. While the features are still undergoing iterative improvements, the incorporation of value investing into the app has already shown a measurable impact:
Cross-collaboration enhances design quality
As the lead product designer, I had the privilege of working closely with a diverse range of stakeholders—from developers to higher management, including the CEO, Customer Service, COO, Legal, Branding, and Marketing teams. This cross-functional collaboration taught me that great design is not created in isolation. By bringing together varied perspectives, we crafted user-centric solutions that aligned seamlessly with both business objectives and user needs.
Advocating for the right priorities
Balancing the needs of users, the business, and development teams often required clear communication and strong advocacy. Successfully pushing for features like the shake-to-feedback system taught me the value of prioritizing user impact while thinking strategically about resources. Convincing stakeholders often meant presenting persuasive, data-driven arguments to build alignment and drive meaningful outcomes.
Agility need to anchor in user needs
Iterating quickly is a necessity in product design, but true agility comes from focusing on user needs. By maintaining an ongoing feedback loop, we ensured that every iteration addressed real user frustrations. This approach helped us stay adaptive while staying firmly grounded in delivering value to our users.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my project! I really appreciate your interest, and I hope you found it interesting and insightful. Cheers!
