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 their portfolio can be funded.
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 for their life — 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 conversations. 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 — Fidelity, E*trade, and Vanguard — structured their portfolio selection questionnaires. This surfaced a common pattern worth borrowing (goal-first questioning, system transparency, preventing abandonment).
A dashboard for multiple use cases. I designed the dashboard with multiple variants depending on the users journey. Everything from an empty state to a power user were created while incorporating responsive design.
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.
