← Work/Brookwell
Brookwell
Helping everyday users earn more on their money by blending trusted banking with crypto-native yield.
- Role
- Project Manager & Design Lead
- Timeline
- October to December 2025
- Team
- 6 designersBlockchain at Berkeley
- Tools
- FigmaFigJamNotion
At a glance
Brookwell pairs FDIC-insured checking with high-yield, stablecoin-powered savings.
Problem
Gen Z is at ease with digital finance, yet stuck in low-yield traditional banks.
While crypto-curious, they are discouraged by DeFi’s complexity and volatility. This leaves users without a reliable way to access modern financial yield for everyday spending.
How might we help young consumers earn yield on their money through stablecoins while preserving the safety of a traditional banking experience?
Design goals
As a team, we aligned on three guiding principles early on.
1. Prioritize trust
The product should feel as trustworthy and established as a bank.
2. Under the hood
Stablecoins power the product, but should be abstracted so as not to overwhelm the user.
3. Financial clarity
Users should always know where their money is, what it’s doing, and how to access it.
Establishing the system
Before any UI, I led the team in mapping the full lifecycle of money.
We mapped Brookwell’s full money lifecycle end to end, from first-time setup to everyday use:
This covers both onboarding constraints (KYC, disclosures, account creation) and post-onboarding financial actions (funding, earning yield, card usage, and account management).
Our inspiration
We studied how modern finance apps make moving money feel intuitive and trustworthy.
Mercury
A calm, institutional tone, and a strong hierarchy for balances, transactions, and controls.
Capital
A simple UI that makes money movement feel fast and intuitive, with motivating, progress-driven visual targets.
Cash App
A focus on financial literacy, with clear breakdowns of balances and activity.
Robinhood
Feels premium without sacrificing trust, and introduces advanced financial concepts gradually.
Sprint-based design process
To manage scope, I ran the project as milestone-driven sprints.
Each sprint deliberately built on the last. This let us iterate with intent, align frequently, and ship under real constraints.
Sprint 1 · Brand foundations
- Establish product direction and define Brookwell’s visual identity
- Finalize color palette and typography
Sprint 2 · Lo-fi onboarding and empty states
- Carve out a lo-fi onboarding flow to optimize clarity for first-time users
- Home screen layout and empty states
Sprint 3 · Hi-fi onboarding and home
- Translate validated lo-fi flows into polished, branded experiences
- Led the transition from lo-fi to hi-fi by implementing the branding
Sprint 4 · Post-onboarding core flows
- Created lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes for all post-onboarding financial tools
- Decomposed post-onboarding into Card, Fund, Earn, and Pay flows
Sprint 5 · Hi-fi polish and handoff
- Revised and refined all hi-fi screens
- Constructed micro-interactions
- Cleaned and annotated Figma files for engineering
The final design
The unified Brookwell experience: earn yield as you spend.
We designed a complete mobile experience, guiding users from their first deposit through earning and managing stablecoin-backed funds.
Home: watch your capital compound effortlessly in real time
Pre-deposit empty states encourage a first funding. Post-deposit states highlight growth and activity. Quick actions reduce friction for the core financial tasks.
Account management: direct every dollar without lifting a finger
A distinct separation between Checking (spending) and Savings (earning). A transparent display of the 1% against the 10% yield. Real-time balances and simple money movement between accounts.
Card: spend globally with unparalleled control
Instant virtual card creation with wallet integration. A clean card dashboard with quick actions. Transaction flows designed for speed and trust.
Spend: get a comprehensive breakdown of your spending
An interactive chart translates spending into a clear category distribution, with a detailed breakdown by category and a chronological list of transactions with clear amounts and timestamps.
Reflection
My takeaways…
Systems thinking is critical in fintech
Designing Brookwell required understanding the full lifecycle of money. Mapping how users onboard, fund, earn, and spend helped us design coherent flows and reduce friction.
Trust is the product, not just a feature
Every decision we made needed to reinforce security and transparency, to make a hybrid trad-fi/DeFi experience feel safe to use.
Brookwell is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services will be provided by an FDIC-insured financial institution. Funds held in Brookwell accounts may be eligible for FDIC insurance through the partner bank and participating network banks, subject to applicable limits and satisfaction of certain conditions for pass-through insurance.
