TD Bank · Human-Centred Design · 2025
Helping people save what they can, not what they think they should
A guided budgeting flow that tells TD customers exactly how much they have left each month to put toward their goals, without logging a single expense by hand.
Owned the flow end to end
Mar – Apr 2025
How might we help people understand how to flexibly manage their money, so they feel confident making progress on their savings goals?
Goal planning at TD took an hour, and still left people guessing
TD's Goal Builder appointment helps customers plan their savings with an advisor. But it starts by asking for information most people don't have on hand: what they earn, what they spend, and where their money goes.
In goal-setting interviews, people said the same thing in different ways: guessing felt inconvenient, and doing the math by hand took too long.
Budgeting feels like punishment, so people avoid it
I ran a digital ethnography of how people talk about budgeting on Reddit, then compared it with what we heard in TD's goal-setting interviews.
One rigid budget fails two kinds of people
Budget-blowers ignore their budget and deal with the stress later. Paralyzed savers cut everything and feel confined.
Manual tracking is the breaking point
Logging every expense by hand was the most common reason people gave up on budgeting.
People want a number they can trust
Not a lecture on cutting costs. Just how much is safe to save, so they can make trade-offs with confidence.
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The solution, key decisions, process and impact are behind this. Email eelisabethlau@gmail.com for the password.