CLIENT:
Axos Invest
CONTRIBUTION:
User Research, Prototypes, Hi-Fi Mockups, User Testing
TOOLS:
Figma, Zeplin, UserTesting.com, Microsoft Teams
YEAR:
2025
Invest Model Selection Tool
about.
Axos offers advisor managed portfolios, a professionally managed investment product where clients' assets are allocated according to curated models built by Axos asset managers. When a new account is opened, the client must choose a model before they interact with the user dashboard.
I was part of a two-person design team that built the Manager & Model Selection Tool: an 8-step guided questionnaire that helps first-time investors choose the right model with clarity and confidence, without needing to call support.
challenge.
Axos needed to help users make a complex, consequential financial decision independently.
The old experience dropped users onto a model selection page with no context, no guidance, and no framework for evaluating options. Choosing between managers like Genter, Axos Invest, and Morningstar, or understanding what "Focused Moderate" actually meant required knowledge most users simply didn't have.
Three things made this a hard design problem:
No self-service path. Every decision required scheduling time with an advisor. Users couldn't explore models independently or at their own pace.
Slow, high-friction onboarding. Funding an account could stall for days while users waited on a callback or a follow-up email with fact sheets attached.
Didn't scale. As Axos Invest grew, advisors couldn't personally walk every new client through manager and model options. The process depended entirely on advisor availability and bandwidth.
result.
We replaced advisor-mediated onboarding with a self-service digital experience: a questionnaire that lets users simply choose a model on their own, without waiting on a callback or an email.
Research grounded in real advisor interviews. I sat down directly with advisors and investment SMEs to understand the questions they asked clients, roadblocks in their workflows, and the reasoning they used to narrow down a model recommendation. That conversation became the backbone of the questionnaire logic: the four core questions (objective, amount, time horizon, preferences) mirror what an advisor would naturally ask, just translated into a digital flow.
Competitive analysis shaped the approach. I audited how other investment platforms, including Fidelity, E*Trade, and Vanguard, structured their portfolio selection questionnaires. This surfaced a common pattern worth borrowing: goal-first questioning, system transparency, and preventing abandonment.
A dashboard for multiple use cases. The design was finalized and handed off to the development team, where I stayed closely involved through implementation, communicating regularly with the PM and engineers to clarify edge cases, validate UI components, and make sure the build matched the intended experience.
