Dividend re-investment

Background

The problem

At Interactive Investor, I led the redesign of the Dividend Reinvestment feature across web and mobile. This feature enables users to automatically reinvest dividends to compound returns a key behaviour for long-term investors .

The existing experience was built on legacy infrastructure, creating inconsistencies, usability issues, and limitations for future scalability.

The dividend reinvestment experience was underperforming due to:

• Fragmented workflows across web and mobile

• Poor discoverability within the platform

• Lack of clarity for new investors making financial decisions

• Inconsistent UI patterns due to legacy systems

This resulted in:

• User confusion

• Increased reliance on customer support

• Reduced confidence in enabling reinvestment

My role

• Led end-to-end product design

• Defined problem space with product and research

• Facilitated cross-functional collaboration (PM, engineers, QA, API teams)

• Drove design decisions and trade-offs

Success metrics

These are the success metrics and criteria set for the project to make sure all ares were considered

User goals

Business goals

Constraints

Redesign the experience to:

• Improve usability and decision confidence

• Create a consistent cross-platform system

• Reduce friction in enabling/disabling reinvestment

• Align the feature with the new design system for scalability

• Understand how reinvestment works

• Clearly see eligible holdings

• Make quick changes to reinvestment preferences

• The ability to view their dividends

• Project scope limited to enable/disable reinvestment only

• Legacy backend (WebBroker) imposed technical constraints

• Additional features (e.g. investment dashboards) were out of scope

• Needed to align with evolving design system

Research & discovery

Research approach

• Moderated usability testing (5 active investors)

• Behavioural insights from CX team

• Heuristic evaluation

• Competitor analysis

Key insights

• Users understood the concept but lacked confidence in execution

• Navigation was unintuitive (misplaced in mental model)

• Missing contextual information created hesitation

• Feedback signals (e.g. confirmation states) were too weak

How might we...

• …provide more clarity on dividend reinvestment eligibility?

• …provide multiple routes to the page for easier navigation?

• …provide clearer feedback that settings have been changed?

• ...provide a simpler process to reinvest dividends for bot seasoned and new users?

• ...breakdown the 'block of text' to be understood, so all users are aware of what dividend reinvestment is, and the fees included

Workflow assessment

A few competitors were analysed to understand how the mobile app concept was designed in the industry

Heuristic evaluation

Competitor analysis

The journey went through evaluation to ideate a clearer structure for dividend actions.

Concept exploration

Several interaction and navigation patterns were explored.

Key improvements included:

• Visible feedback notifications when reinvestment settings are changed

• clearer eligibility indicators for holdings

• contextual explanations explaining how reinvestment works

The goal was to reduce cognitive load and align the interface with investors’ mental models.

For the website there were quite a few more starting points such as the transaction history, order list or straight under the portfolio. Then all the information would be either be visible o one page or an information page will be shown before that.

Mobile app

Web

For the mobile concept, because this will be a new app feature we had to start from scratch. There were a two starting points that were explored, such as the profile menu or in the wallet. Beyond that we needed a page to explain what dividend reinvestment was and the eligibility criteria, before landing on the actual page to change the settings.

These initial wireframes went through consumer duty testing.

Key findings:

• The 'default' feature in the journey, was not clear

• Users found it hard to switch accounts

• Good consumer understanding of eligibility and fees

• The navigation was still not clear

Final design

Reduce cognitive load in financial decision-making

• Added contextual guidance (tooltips, explanations)

• Separated complex information into digestible steps

Decision:

• Prioritised clarity over density of information

Before

After

Improve discoverability through product placement

Instead of treating reinvestment as a hidden setting:

• Introduced clearer entry points

• Surfaced status within portfolio view

Trade-off:

• Increased visibility vs UI clutter

• Chose visibility due to impact on adoption

Key product decisions

Standardise cross-platform behaviour

• Unified web and mobile interaction patterns

• Designed mobile-first components for scalability

Impact:

• Reduced friction for multi-device users

• Created reusable system patterns

Strengthen system feedback

• Improved confirmation states

• Increased visibility of system status

Why:

• Financial actions require high trust and reassurance

Design system contribution

Collaboration with Engineering

• Implemented updated components across feature

• Introduced new patterns for:

  • Financial settings flows

  • Confirmation feedback

• Ensured scalability for future features

• Worked closely with engineers to align on:

  • API constraints

  • Data handling

  • Feasible interaction patterns

• Adjusted designs based on:

  • Backend limitations

  • Performance considerations

Results & impact

• SUS score: 84 (above industry benchmark)

• Improved clarity and confidence in task completion

• Reduced user confusion in navigation and feature understanding

• Established scalable patterns for future financial features

Next steps

• Measure adoption rate of reinvestment post-launch

• Track behavioural metrics (conversion, retention)

• Explore dashboard-level visibility for investment performance

• Continue iterating on onboarding for new investors