Bringing index investing to the next ten million.
Discover how Atlas reframed onboarding, fund discovery, and the first investment into a single, confidence-building flow — and grew activated investors by more than 40%.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Year
- 2024
- Platform
- iOS · Android · Web
Jan 2026 · Case study
An investing product for people who were told it wasn't for them
Most investing apps are built for people who already invest. Atlas set out to serve the opposite audience — first-time investors who find the category intimidating, jargon-heavy, and easy to abandon. The brief was deceptively simple: get someone from download to their first invested real, without a single moment of doubt.
- Onboarding that teaches by doing, not by explaining.
- Fund discovery that scales from 4 funds to 400 without overwhelming.
- A first-investment flow that removes every avoidable decision.
All three rest on the same foundation — a design system and a vocabulary built to make confidence the default state.
“Atlas didn't just redesign screens — it gave the whole company a clearer way to talk about what we were building and who it was for. The flow feels obvious now, which is the hardest thing to achieve.”
Confidence is the product
Research surfaced two distinct users hiding behind one funnel: the curious-but-cautious newcomer, and the lapsed investor returning after a bad experience. Both abandoned at the same moments — the questionnaire, the fund list, and the final confirmation.
- The questionnaire felt like a test users could fail.
- An undifferentiated fund list forced a choice nobody felt qualified to make.
- The confirmation screen surfaced fear at exactly the wrong moment.
How we solved it.
Teach by doing
We replaced the upfront questionnaire with a guided first investment — the app explains each concept at the exact moment it becomes relevant, so learning and progress happen together.
A discovery system, not a list
Funds are organized by goal and risk into a categorization model designed to stay legible as the catalog grows from a handful of options to hundreds.
Remove every avoidable decision
Sensible defaults, progressive disclosure, and a single primary action per screen turned a multi-step gauntlet into a flow that feels like one continuous motion.
A system, not a set of screens
- Tokens and components shared across iOS, Android, and web.
- Motion and interaction specs documented alongside the visuals.
- A content model that lets the catalog grow without a redesign.
The system now powers 200+ screens across three platforms from a single source of truth.
Design that held up from research through release
Research & strategy
- 12 weeks of generative + evaluative research
- Two distinct user archetypes
- A reframed problem statement
Product design
- Guided first-investment flow
- Goal-based fund discovery
- Instrumented for weekly experiments
Design systems
- 60+ components, fully tokenized
- Motion + accessibility specs
- Adopted across all squads
Discovery
Generative research, problem reframing, two archetypes.
Concept
Guided onboarding prototype, tested with 30+ newcomers.
System
Design system built and adopted across squads.
Launch
Phased rollout, +42% activation within two quarters.
Want the full walkthrough?
Happy to talk through the research, the trade-offs, and the things that didn't work.