Project Overview

• Company / Context: J.P. Morgan Chase • Digital Customer Experience (DCE) + Digital Wealth Management (DWM) teams.

• Timeline: 2017 – 2019

• Product: YouInvest™ — a new self-directed investing platform for first-time investors.

• Goal: Enable “Starters” (savers with $25k+ in cash but <$10k invested) to gain confidence and open their first investment account.

• Outcome: By March 2020, 4–5 % of weekly site visitors opened a YouInvest account — a significant conversion for a new product category.

My Role

• Senior UX Researcher on a two-person Cadence Research team.

• Co-led rolling cycles of usability and concept testing across web and mobile investing products.

• Partnered with design leads, PMs, and analytics teams to define research priorities and translate insights into roadmap decisions.

• Delivered ongoing stakeholder workshops and journey map synthesis to inform personas and launch strategy.

The Challenge

• Many potential customers lacked basic investment knowledge and trusted traditional savings over stock market investing.

• Chase needed to design a digital experience that built trust and literacy — without human advisors.

• Research goal: identify what language, content, and UI patterns increase confidence and conversion for first-time investors.

Research Approach

Rolling Program (18 months):

• Continuous 1:1 interviews and usability sessions (~25 cycles).

• Mixed methods: lab studies and hallway validations.

• Discovery → Evaluation → Launch (cadence ensured weekly insight delivery)

Key Methods Used:

• Affinity mapping & thematic analysis.

• Persona development for “Starters.”

• Customer journey map creation (linking confidence milestones).

• Stakeholder workshops to co-prioritize UX improvements.

Participants

We recruited people who had more than $25K in a savings account and less than $10K invested in the stock market, preferably in a mutual fund. We called this population “Starters.”

These criteria aligned with Chase’s target audience for YouInvest — consumers with capital but low market confidence.

Sample size: Our studies were always bi-weekly, with ten individuals, over the course of two days. We worked closely with a recruitment agency to target the right people.

Objectives – A few things we wanted to learn.

• Do people understand how “robo” accounts work?

• Would people expect to meet with a human advisor?

• How do people respond when they learn their money would be managed by a “robo-advisor”?

• How do people react to the concept of letting an algorithm manage their investments?

Content/ Design Iterations

Impact

• 4–5 % conversion rate of site visitors opening YouInvest accounts post-launch.

• Customer-journey map for “Starter” investors became a reference framework across DWM.

• Rolling-research model scaled to additional Chase investment products.

• Team recognized internally for contributing to the smoothest digital-product launch in DWM history.

Journey Map: New Investor Starts an investment account

Thank you!!