Design SystemsResearchFinancial education

Intuit for Education

A financial education product for college students. I built the design system before the product direction was settled, and ran the research that informed which visual direction the team took forward.

CONTEXT

The Foundations Came Before the Answers

Intuit for Education was meant to help college students relate to money through three connected modules: Track for everyday awareness, Plan for future goals, Learn for financial concepts delivered in context.

I joined before the Design Lead, which meant building the system while the product was still deciding what it was. Tokens, color functions, typographic scales, light and dark themes, font scaling — foundations for a product whose direction, tone and visual identity were all still open.

That is the constraint the whole project ran on. A system built too tightly around an unsettled direction breaks the moment the direction moves. Built too loosely, it stops being a system at all.

My Role·Product Designer·Design system and research, alongside a Design Lead

CollaborationDesign Lead, PM, and Intuit stakeholders

Problem: The team needed a stable base to design against, but every visual and tonal question the base would normally answer was still open. Waiting meant designing screens with no system; committing early meant hard-coding a direction that hadn't been chosen.

Proposal: I built the layer that doesn't depend on the answer: tokens and color functions rather than colors, typographic scales rather than type choices, theme and font-scaling structure rather than a theme. The decisions that were still open stayed open, as values the system could take.

Argument: A design system's job in an unsettled project isn't to decide — it's to hold the shape of the decision until it's made. That is what let the product absorb a visual direction it hadn't chosen, months later, without rebuilding.

Problem: Track, Plan and Learn were three different intents — what happened today, what you want later, and what you need to understand. Designed separately they would read as three products sharing a login.

Proposal: I designed across all three against the same system, so spending in Track could surface a goal in Plan, and a goal could surface the Learn moment relevant to it — a single hierarchy rather than three navigations.

Argument: The students the product was for don't experience money in modules. Splitting the interface along the team's internal structure would have handed them the organization chart instead of the product.

Research

The Direction the Team Expected to Win Didn't

We interviewed Gen Z college students, course coordinators and financial aid staff to understand everyday money stress and planning needs. Then, instead of arguing about visual direction internally, we tested it. Several designers each produced a distinct direction, and I ran the comparison in Maze — writing the script, piloting the script itself to check people understood what was being asked, running the study, analyzing it and presenting the results internally.

Which direction lands with students
Question
Four visual directions — from brutalist to calm and quiet — tested for the line between institutional trust and student authenticity.
Test
Unmoderated desirability test in Maze with 18-to-20-year-old college students.
What changed
The bold option read as “fake.” The calmer direction won, described as “simple” and “chill.”
Whether the study itself was sound
Question
Would participants read the questions the way we intended?
Test
I piloted the script before running the study.
What changed
Wording corrected first, so the result measured the direction rather than the phrasing.
How the product performed in use
Question
Whether the flows held up once the UI existed.
Test
Usability testing in Maze, scripted, run and analyzed in-house.
What changed
Findings taken back into the flows and presented to the team.

The direction changed after it was chosen. A new brand identity arrived from elsewhere in the program. Two more designers joined for visual and motion work; I took the flows and UI. The foundations took the change without being rebuilt.

Outcome

A System That Survived a Direction It Didn't Choose

The design scope was delivered in full and handed off to engineering. A late change of brand direction was absorbed into the existing foundations rather than restarting them.

Design system foundations built before the direction was settled: tokens, color functions, typographic scales, light and dark themes, font scaling
The majority of product screens across Track, Plan and Learn, designed against that system
A visual direction chosen by evidence from the target audience rather than by internal preference
A production file structure — master, default, dark mode, font scaling — organized for engineering handoff

Reflection

A Designer's Takeaway

Early design system work decides how much later change costs.

Building foundations before the direction is settled takes judgment calls you can't validate yet — and the test of those calls only arrives when the direction moves.

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