Retirement & advice platform — a calmer investing experience
Replacing dense ledgers with clear, decision-ready dashboards.
Vanguard serves millions of long-horizon investors. The retirement experience had grown into a dense, ledger-style interface that buried the few decisions clients actually need to make.
Investors couldn't tell at a glance whether they were on track. Advisors were spending most of their session time reconciling data instead of giving advice.
- 01
Ran generative research with retail investors across 5 life stages to define the smallest set of decisions that matter.
- 02
Designed an investor dashboard that leads with on-track status, next best action and a clear path to advice.
- 03
Rebuilt the advisor workbench around the same data, so client and advisor see one shared truth.
- 04
Hardened accessibility to AA+ across the platform, including non-visual data summaries for screen readers.
Five life stages, one decision frame
Generative research mapped how investors think across early career, family forming, peak earning, pre-retirement and drawdown. Every dashboard module was tied to a decision from that frame.
On-track at a glance
The home view leads with an on-track indicator, projected income and the next best action. Dense ledgers move into progressive disclosure so they're available without dominating the page.
- Task completion up 38%
- Support contacts down 44%
Calm on every device
A mobile-first rebuild and AA+ accessibility hardening — including data sonification for charts and non-visual on-track summaries — made the experience usable for every investor.
What shipped, and what changed.
Task completion across core retirement journeys up 38%.
Support contacts for the same journeys down 44%.
Platform achieved AA+ accessibility rating.
Single design system adopted across investor and advisor surfaces.