Two proposed ways to explain retirement progress
The problem
Saving for retirement rewards a growing balance. Spending in retirement reverses that habit, which can make a falling balance feel like failure. Our work on Vanguard’s Year-in-Review experience focused on the gap between financial information and confidence about everyday spending.
The proposal
We proposed a monthly “Retirement Paycheck” to translate holdings into an understandable spending figure, paired with a “Readiness Score” to make progress easier to interpret.
My contribution
I helped lead UX research and redesign strategy. The recommendation centered on the questions users brought to the product: what their savings meant in practice, and whether they were on track.
What we expected to change
The intended benefit was greater clarity and confidence in retirement decisions. That was a design rationale, not a measured increase in engagement or trust.