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Fernwick

Case study — Fintech

Shipping a fintech MVP from sketch to App Store

UX DesignUI Design
Designers working side by side on the fintech app prototype in the studio

Overview

Client
Ledgerline
Year
2020 — 2021
Role
Senior Product Designer
Scope
Research to launch

Ledgerline had a powerful budgeting engine and six months of runway — but no product a customer could touch. As the founding designer, I owned everything from first interviews to the App Store screenshots, working shoulder to shoulder with two engineers and a formidable founder.

The brief was unforgiving: prove that busy freelancers would trust a new app with their money. We cut ruthlessly, tested weekly and launched an iOS MVP that did three things brilliantly instead of thirty things adequately.

The challenge

Trust is the whole product

Nobody adopts a money app because it looks nice — they adopt it because every screen feels careful, legible and safe. Early interviews showed freelancers abandoning finance tools at the first confusing number, so clarity became our primary feature.

Meanwhile the clock was loud: every extra screen was another week of engineering we didn’t have. The design had to carry the maximum meaning with the minimum surface.

Two teammates reviewing early app flows at their desks

The approach

One testable slice at a time

Phase 01

Field research

Shadowed fourteen freelancers through payday week to find where money anxiety actually spikes.

Phase 02

Prototype loops

Shipped a clickable prototype every Friday and tested it with five fresh participants each Monday.

Phase 03

Launch & learn

Instrumented the three core flows, then tuned copy and hierarchy against real first-week behaviour.

The team mapping onboarding feedback on a studio wall Engineers and designers pairing on the app build

Outcome

  • Launched on schedule

    The MVP reached the App Store inside the runway window, with onboarding users completed unaided in testing.

  • A foundation, not a prototype

    The navigation model and component set carried straight into the Series A roadmap without a rewrite.

  • Evidence for the next raise

    Weekly test reels gave the founders a story investors could see — real people, real comprehension, real intent.

Keep exploring

Racing toward an MVP launch?

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