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The project need was identified through market observations and initiated internally. Across global markets, a behavioral shift was underway: retail investing was growing rapidly, but it wasn't being driven by traditional financial research. New investors were making decisions based on personal sentiment, cultural context, CEO reputation, and social media narratives; signals that existing platforms weren't surfacing at all.

Our internal company recognized an opportunity to build a proprietary product that could be licensed to banking clients and adapted to their existing platforms, effectively addressing a real user need while creating a scalable B2B revenue stream.

Key principles shaped the design direction from the start:

• Adaptability over customization: The product would live in highly variable contexts, from full desktop dashboards to minor mobile widgets, across clients with different tiers of financial technology demand and purchasing power. It had to feel at home in any buyer's environment without requiring bespoke builds for each

• International scope: The demand for this type of product was identified as higher at an international level. Cultural differences in how investors relate to financial information, market events, and corporate figures had to be considered from the ground up, not retrofitted later. At the time, we had clients across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Spain, etc and needed to consider culture fit for applicable countries.

The investing audience was changing faster than the tools designed to serve them. New investors weren't interested in traditional stock market data, but were driven through personal narratives. A platform that only spoke in hard data was leaving an entire generation of investors without a way in.

At the same time, research behavior was extending beyond the platform itself. Investors were collecting articles, saving social posts, writing notes, and forming opinions across multiple apps and browsers before returning to trade. There was no product in the market that acknowledged this fragmented, multi-surface research journey.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Product concept & narrative framework: Defined the core design philosophy to lead with empathy and embody the mindset of the new investor type. Made it a priority to translate financial data into story-driven context that acknowledges how new investors actually form opinions, using signals like CEO approval ratings, social media sentiment, and cultural relevance alongside traditional market data

• Adaptable design system: Designed the product to be modular and environment-agnostic, capable of sitting inside a Big 4 bank's desktop dashboard, a mid-tier brokerage's mobile app, or a lightweight widget without losing coherence or brand integrity

• Browser extension & investing journal concept: Extended the product beyond the platform with a companion browser extension that lets investors collect external research (articles, notes, market feelings, social posts) into a client-branded investing journal, bringing their full research journey into one place

• B2B pitch design: Prepared and presented the product concept to prospective banking clients across the US and Canada, designing the pitch to demonstrate adaptability to each buyer's specific platform context and user base

• International design considerations: Factored cultural differences in financial sentiment, market behavior, and narrative framing into the design to ensure the product could scale beyond North American markets

The product concept was successfully pitched to Big 4 banking clients in both the US and Canada, resulting in adoption of the proprietary software into their existing platforms. Getting an original, internally-conceived product concept across the finish line with enterprise banking clients, in two countries, is a business impact outcome that goes beyond design execution.