Wealt
Wealth
Helping people track everything they own, and later invest in private companies.
Wealt started as an app for everything you own: bank accounts and shares, but also a flat, a car, a cask of whisky or a stake in a startup. Then the business changed course, and the app had to become a way to invest in private companies.
As Lead Designer, I was the only designer on the team. I worked with the CEO and partners, who acted as product owners, and with a strategist, a content and marketing lead, and front-end and back-end developers, across both versions of the app and the company’s first website. Both versions of the app went live.
- 15things you can add, from a bank account to a cask of whisky
- RoleLead Designer
- ClientWealt, London
- PlatformiOS and Android app
The problem
Fifteen very different things to add, and one total to trust.
Wealt’s founder came from trading. He saw markets full of noise, and people investing without a clear rationale. His answer was one place for everything you own.
A banking app shows your accounts. It knows nothing about the house, the watch, the wine or the shares in a friend’s company.
That meant fifteen very different things to add. Accounts can connect directly; everything else is added by hand. And a share price updates itself, while a painting doesn’t, so the total would mix market prices with people’s own estimates and still had to be worth trusting.
Version one
One way to add everything you own.
Net worth sits on the home screen. Every asset, from a savings account to a cask, is added through the same flow.
Decisions
Four decisions behind the first version.
Decision 01
Four steps for almost everything.
Almost everything added by hand follows the same four steps: what it is, what you paid, what it’s worth, and the last details. The progress bar looks the same every time, and the first step is where assets differ. A home takes six steps, because it also needs an address and, often, a mortgage.
For a car, you type the VIN and the app fills in the make, model and year for you to confirm. For a whisky, you choose region, style and distillery, and say whether you bought a bottle or a cask.
Decision 02
Say where the number comes from.
The total mixes market prices with people’s own estimates, so the two shouldn’t look the same. Everything added by hand says which kind of value it has: an automatic valuation that moves with the market, or your own estimate, which you’ll need to update.
Decision 03
You decide what counts.
You can own half of a flat, so every asset has an ownership share. And any asset can be left out of your net worth with one switch, without deleting it.
Decision 04
Show when a bank connection lapses.
When a bank connection lapses, the account doesn’t keep showing an old balance as if nothing happened. It says it’s disconnected and offers to extend the connection for 90 days with one tap.
The turn
Then the business changed.
Tracking wealth was useful. Giving people a way into private deals was where the business could grow. The company chose the second, and the app had to be reshaped around it. As a team, we chose to iterate on version one rather than start again.
Five tabs became three: Portfolio, Deals and Profile. Net worth moved into Portfolio, where holdings can be grouped by account, by type or by currency.
Adding assets stayed, narrowed to what a private investor holds: real estate, private funds, startups, artwork, wine and whisky. The same steps carried over.
Version two
Three decisions for the new Deals tab.
Decision 05
Live, upcoming, past.
Deals sit in three tabs. Before you open one, each card shows how much is available, how much is already collected, the minimum you can put in and how long is left.
Decision 06
Fees on the first screen.
On the deal page, the setup fee and carry sit next to the price per share and the minimum and maximum investment. Deadlines, structure and the factsheet each have their own tab.
A deal moves through three states: live, interest collected, closed. You read and accept a disclaimer before you see the deals, and register your interest from the deal page.
Decision 07
A waitlist with invites.
New members joined a waitlist and saw their place in it. Each member had an invite link to share, and the app counted the friends they invited and the Wealt Points they earned.
What didn’t land
The spending section was cut.
The first version had a full spending section: connected accounts in one view, broken down by category, shop, country and currency. It has no place in the second version. It had been built for the first product, not the second.
Design system
What carried over to version two.
The app was built on its own design system: a component library, an icon library and the app icon. I think it’s a big part of why the change could be an iteration rather than a restart. The new tab bar went in as one more component, next to the old one.
Lessons
What I took away.
Design the system, not just the screens. Not every screen of the first version survived. The steps, the components and the way values were shown did.
Be clear about what is certain. People can trust a total, or a deal, when they can see which parts are estimates and what it costs.
And in a small team, design and business decisions sit close together. Knowing why the product was changing, not only what to change, made the change easier to design for.
The final screens
Version one and version two.
Afterwards
Both versions went live.
