Wintrust Bank

Overview

A mock project exploring how Wintrust Bank could deepen its relationship with younger customers through a family financial app — one that gave parents oversight while teaching children aged 8–14 real money skills through interactive tools and goal-setting. Wintrust was not an actual client; the brief was self-directed as a design exercise.

The Problem

Existing banking apps weren't built for families. Children had no safe way to interact with money digitally, and parents had no visibility into spending habits outside of handing over cash. Wintrust needed a product that served both audiences simultaneously without alienating either — a difficult dual-user design problem.

Process

1. 1.

   Recruited and interviewed 12 parent-child pairs to understand how families currently talk about and manage money together

2. 2.

   Facilitated co-design workshops where children drew their ideal 'money app' — surfacing unexpected priorities like earning transparency and visual savings progress

3. 3.

   Defined two distinct personas: the Oversight Parent and the Learning Child, each with their own interface layer but shared data

4. 4.

   Designed a parent dashboard for setting allowances, approving purchases, and monitoring goals alongside a child-facing interface with simplified language and progress animations

5. 5.

   Ran three rounds of usability testing with real families, adjusting reading level, iconography, and navigation depth based on observed confusion points

Outcome

The final design featured a dual-interface system: parents managed allowances and spending limits while children tracked savings goals through a progress-based interface. Children in testing sessions completed savings goal setup in under 2 minutes without assistance.