Wahed, a pioneering Halal fintech investment platform based in New York, set out to democratize ethical investing for a global audience, boasting over 500,000 app downloads. As the Senior Product Designer, I led the full product design lifecycle, from initial ideation through to launch.This strategic design leadership introduced scalable UI systems and impactful features that not only enriched the user experience but also delivered significant business growth: a 25% boost in user engagement and an additional $1.8 million in annual revenue in 2022. This case study demonstrates how a human-centered, systems-driven design approach was central to Wahed’s remarkable product transformation.
Wahed stands as a compelling testament to accessible and Sharia-compliant financial innovation. With a robust and growing presence across key regions like the Middle East and Southeast Asia, it effectively serves a diverse international user base through its intuitive iOS, Android, and web platforms.
Wahed’s mission extends far beyond traditional finance, actively promoting financial literacy and making ethical investment opportunities available to communities worldwide, especially those who have historically been underserved.
In an increasingly competitive global fintech arena, Wahed faced a multifaceted challenge that demanded a strategic design response. The platform needed to forge a truly distinct visual and brand identity, one that would resonate deeply with a diverse, international audience while simultaneously reinforcing its fundamental ethical foundation.
A critical objective was to simplify and enhance the user onboarding journey, making ethical investing intuitive and genuinely accessible for first-time investors across the globe. Furthermore, ensuring a seamless, consistent, and exceptionally user-friendly experience across all its iOS, Android, and web touchpoints was paramount. Finally, building for scalability was crucial, necessitating the implementation of a robust design system to foster alignment and efficiency across product, engineering, and marketing teams as the platform inevitably expanded.
Wahed’s existing legacy UI presented significant hurdles; a pervasive lack of clarity and consistency directly led to an increase in support queries and negatively impacted conversion rates, ultimately hindering both user adoption and overall satisfaction.
As the Senior Product Designer from July 2017 to April 2023, my contributions were pivotal in addressing these complex challenges, encompassing a holistic approach to product design and strategy. I guided the complete product design lifecycle, from initial concept development to final deployment across Wahed’s mobile and web ecosystems, ensuring a cohesive and effective user experience.
Collaboration was a cornerstone of my approach; I fostered deep partnerships within agile, cross-functional teams, ensuring that design solutions were seamlessly integrated with development efforts and overarching product strategy. My design decisions were always insight-driven, informed by comprehensive user research, usability testing, and stakeholder interviews conducted to uncover critical pain points.
I architected intuitive, compliant, and user-centric flows for critical processes such as Know Your Customer (KYC), account setup, and diverse investment pathways, prioritizing both usability and regulatory adherence.
A key strategic contribution was spearheading the creation of a unified, scalable design system. This involved meticulously documenting component behavior, building reusable UI libraries, and ensuring consistent implementation across design, engineering, and product management, serving as a single source of truth for the product’s visual and interactive language.
Throughout this process, I utilized a suite of impactful tools including Figma, Zeplin, Jira, Maze, Slack, and Google Analytics to streamline workflows and gather critical data.
My design strategy was deeply rooted in a thorough understanding of user needs and an unwavering commitment to scalable, ethical design principles.
The process began with comprehensive discovery and immersive research. We conducted extensive user interviews with investors across the UAE, KSA, and Southeast Asia, gaining invaluable insights into their regional preferences and unique financial behaviors. This research was crucial in identifying critical friction points within the existing onboarding process and dashboard navigation, pinpointing clear opportunities for simplification and enhancement.
A significant phase involved establishing a robust design system and ensuring visual consistency across all platforms. We developed a comprehensive suite of scalable UI components within Figma, meticulously documenting them with clear naming conventions and usage guidelines to ensure clarity and ease of use for all teams. Furthermore, design tokens were unified across all platforms, guaranteeing a consistent visual language that significantly enhanced accessibility and powerfully reinforced Wahed’s brand identity globally.
Driving feature innovation was another key aspect of my approach. We strategically introduced intelligent recurring deposit flows to actively encourage consistent savings habits among users. Intuitive goal-based investing modules were designed, empowering users to seamlessly align their investments with their personal financial objectives. Additionally, auto-save features with predictive prompts were implemented, making smart financial decisions effortless and more accessible for everyone.
Finally, ensuring compliance and accessibility was paramount. We embedded robust regulatory patterns for complex processes like KYC and GDPR, ensuring full compliance while meticulously maintaining a user-friendly experience that never felt cumbersome. Accessibility standards were prioritized from the outset, with a strong focus on optimal contrast, font scalability, and mobile-first performance to effectively serve Wahed’s diverse global user base.
To further illustrate the transformation, a visual showcase would include side-by-side mockups vividly illustrating the Before/After UI Comparison, highlighting the improvements from the legacy to the redesigned dashboard and onboarding screens in terms of clarity, whitespace utilization, and Call-to-Action effectiveness.
A Design System Component Sheet would visually represent the atoms, molecules, and templates, demonstrating the robustness, scalability, and consistency achieved through the unified design system.
The Goal-Based Investing Flow would be showcased through a step-by-step display of mobile UI screens, effectively demonstrating the seamless user experience of the new feature.
Optionally, an Impact Graph could visually correlate user growth post-redesign with the direct impact of design on business growth.
This transformative engagement with Wahed reinforced several critical insights that I carry forward into future projects.
It became clear that a scalable design system is far more than just a visual asset; it serves as an incredibly powerful collaboration tool that aligns and empowers diverse teams, fostering efficiency and consistency.
The experience also demonstrated that even within highly complex regulatory frameworks, design can indeed remain human-centered, intuitive, and aesthetically compelling, proving that compliance and excellent user experience are not mutually exclusive.
Ultimately, this case study vividly illustrates how strategic design, when closely aligned with clear business objectives, directly drives measurable financial growth and significantly enhances overall user satisfaction.
