Overview
Data collection enables the secure transfer of money and prevents fraudulent activity. Too few requests can signal a lack of diligence toward user security. Too many can feel imposing and manipulative. The challenge for the Movo onboarding flow was to design a human-centric experience where data collection communicates trust, credibility, and security within a streamlined, frictionless flow.
Discover
Initial research
To understand the mobile payment transfer landscape, I analyzed five leading apps: Revolut, Remitly, Western Union, Ria, and WorldRemit. I created a journey maps for each competitor to assess users’ emotional experiences and identify key points of friction. I focused my research on trust signals and emotional friction, which, when not in harmony, often led to feelings of intrusiveness or lack of security.
The maps revealed an imbalance between emotional state and perceived security, with tediousness in flows like Revolut showing that high data collection volume can negatively affect users.
Competitor analysis takeaways
I distilled the most common points of friction and recurring patterns into user insights. This surfaced potential opportunities to improve the onboarding experience.
Take-aways
Implication
No standard for type, amount or order of data collection.
Users experience increased caution due to the lack of a familiar baseline.
Strong hierarchy and consistent design leads to a predictable and easy to digest experience
Clear main actions and notifications signal that the company understands user needs well, increasing user confidence.
Variability in branding consistency and tone (including interactions and animations)
Inconsistencies with brand tone reduce perceived thoroughness, decreasing trust in app security.
Security features work best when justified and framed as safety measures rather than surveillance
Transparency makes the experience feel more like a collaboration, thus increasing trust and confidence in the user.
Define
Guiding principles
To ensure the onboarding felt trustworthy, credible, and human, I defined 3–5 guiding principles based on competitors’ strengths and pain points. Each principle included visual, interaction, and content cues that informed the final design.
Branding
Guiding principles are nothing, however, without a brand to reflect. To keep things simple yet effective, I chose an adjective as the foundation for the brand: momentum. From there I derived both the company name: Movo, a play on the word movement, and a slogan: “Move money, Move forward”, to give the company more personality and help define the tonal boundaries of the design.
Structure
Since there is no industry standard onboarding flow for money transfer apps, I based my structure on the only common data collection and legal requirements found across all competitors: name, phone number, email address, terms and conditions, and privacy agreements. This created familiarity without compromising trust.
To ensure balance between data collection, tone and legal requirements I created a content journey map to track both cognitive load and emotional reassurance. This helped clarify where users might feel overwhelmed or uncertain, the guiding principles not followed, and where the brand is under-utilized.
Based on my competitive audit, I noticed that flows with fewer than three screens signaled a lack of rigor, while anything beyond seven felt tedious. Using this as a range, I landed on 6 screens, enough to feel thorough, but streamlined and clear considering the data collection requirements. Each screen’s content was crafted in sequence and validated against the guiding principles to make sure the onboarding stayed consistent, human, and credible.
Design
Wireframing with AI
With a clear direction for brand, content, and structure, I transformed these constraints into a detailed wireframing prompt. AI allowed me to explore a wide range of layouts quickly while keeping the process grounded in the defined principles. I specified the required elements, hierarchy, interaction patterns, and a minimal aesthetic to avoid over-influencing the final design.
The value of using AI here was twofold:
- Speed: generating multiple structural options in minutes
- Breadth: surfacing variations I might not have considered under time constraints
I then evaluated each output against three criteria: alignment with the guiding principles and brand, and harmony between reassurance and security . This curation process ensured that while the wireframing process was quick, it did not deviate from the main goals.
High Fidelity Design
Because green and navy are common in fintech, I used a more refined palette composed of dark navy, turquoise, and white. This keeps the visual language familiar and trustworthy without leaning too much on the typical bright blues and greens seen across competitors.
While iterating, I checked every design element against my brand guidelines and guiding principles to ensure alignment and consistency. I balanced professionalism through high contrast, minimal design and a clear modern font, with a sense of immediacy dictated by the progress bar, confirmation and active states, and animations between screens, creating a sense of movement all pointed toward reaching the registration “finish-line”.
Motion Design
Of course, the theme of “momentum” wouldn’t be complete without a little motion design. While not entirely necessary I wanted to challenge myself to include motion design in a way that enhanced the brand, thus signalling more thoroughness and ultimately, trust.
Since much of the onboarding experience involves legal disclosure and data collection, moments where the user requires focus and reassurance, I placed the animation where it would enhance rather than distract from the experience.
The intro screen features a subtle animation inspired by currency conversion: each coin takes turns rotating, transitioning from one currency to another from left to right. This motion conveys calm professionalism while communicating the app’s purpose and further establishing movement in the user journey.
Prototyping with AI
Using a combination of Rive, Github and Figma Make, I was able to create a functioning version of this prototype, complete with inputs, error fields, and logo animation. It took nearly 100 iterations to fix and refine the experience but here we are!
Qualitative results
I conducted exploratory user sessions, inviting participants to navigate the prototype and share their impressions of the experience. Feedback highlighted that the “sleek and professional” flow felt thorough, thoughtful, and credible with no friction points of note. This reinforced the effectiveness of trust signals, visual hierarchy, and overall design coherence.