BillGO is a B2B2C bill payment platform used by major U.S. banks including Capital One and US Bank. It allows users to manage, pay, and track bills from multiple providers within a single interface. As a Senior Product Designer, I led key initiatives to reduce churn, improve clarity, and rethink the emotional weight that comes with managing personal finances.
The platform was technically robust, but usage data revealed steep drop-off within the first week. I approached the problem not as a UI issue, but as a trust issue. For most users, money is a source of anxiety. That emotional context was missing from the product experience, which I believed was a core driver of churn.
My Role
I led UX design across several high-impact areas of the platform, including onboarding, scheduling, payment flows, and system feedback. I partnered closely with UX research, product managers, and engineering leads to turn emotional insights into practical solutions. I also facilitated cross-functional discussions that helped shift internal thinking from feature optimization to trust-centered experience design.
Our core audience was primarily middle-class elder millennials, but the platform served a broad spectrum of users. Gen Z users made up a smaller segment, yet presented unique challenges in retention and engagement. My design approach prioritized accessibility, emotional clarity, and adaptability across these diverse user groups.
Several partner banks reported that users were disengaging early, often within days of onboarding. Our mandate was to uncover what was causing users to drop off and to design interventions that would reduce friction, build trust, and increase retention.
I proposed an initial hypothesis: that bill pay was not just a functional task, but an emotionally loaded one. Users weren’t just looking for utility. They needed reassurance, predictability, and a sense of control.
We kicked off the initiative with a month-long mixed-method study. Participants across age groups journaled their daily money habits, including their bill-pay behaviors, routines, and emotional triggers. To expand our qualitative understanding, I also led internal walkthroughs with employees, asking them to talk through their personal experiences using competing platforms. These sessions revealed deep usability gaps and unmet emotional needs.
Across interviews and studies, we uncovered four major experience gaps:
Lack of clear confirmation after a bill was paid
Confusing language around due dates and auto-pay
UI patterns that created unintended urgency and anxiety
Inconsistent display of data across billers
Each of these issues created uncertainty and eroded trust.
I worked closely with engineering and product to redesign high-friction flows, rework confusing language, and introduce calmer, more supportive UI patterns. We focused on scheduling, payment confirmation, and alert customization. All were areas where a lack of clarity had caused frustration. We also introduced clearer system feedback to help users feel confident their actions were successful.
The redesign led to a meaningful drop in early churn and an increase in user engagement. While full retention data was confidential, usability testing showed:
Faster task completion across key scheduling and payment flows
Fewer customer support tickets related to payment status
Stronger qualitative feedback around tone, clarity, and emotional ease
The design work also influenced broader platform decisions, including improvements to the CRM dashboard and internal support tooling.
This project pushed me to think beyond utility and approach product design as a tool for emotional regulation. By focusing on how users feel, we created an experience that reduced friction and built trust. That shift helped turn a stressful task into a manageable routine, and played a key role in improving retention across the platform.