Vanguard
Automating Investment Planning for Long-Term Wealth
Designed and developed Vanguard's Automatic Investment Plan feature, enabling customers to automate recurring investments into brokerage accounts, ETFs, mutual funds, and IRAs with clarity and confidence.
The Challenge
Vanguard customers wanted to establish consistent, automated investment habits but found the existing manual process too time-consuming — particularly when managing multiple account types simultaneously.
Setting up recurring investments required navigating separate flows for brokerage accounts, ETFs, mutual funds, and IRAs with no unified view or cross-account automation.
Customers lacked confidence in their setup: unclear confirmation states, no visibility into upcoming scheduled investments, and difficulty modifying or pausing plans led to high call center volume.
Mobile usage of investment features lagged significantly behind desktop, suggesting the existing experience wasn't designed for how customers actually wanted to manage their portfolios on the go.
The Solution
What We Designed
We designed a unified Automatic Investment Plan experience that brings brokerage, ETF, mutual fund, and IRA automation into a single, coherent setup flow. The design prioritizes clarity at the moment of setup and ongoing confidence through a dedicated plan management dashboard.
What We Built
The implementation included a guided setup flow with plain-language explanations of contribution rules, cross-account scheduling with conflict detection, a persistent plan dashboard showing upcoming investments and contribution history, and mobile-first interactions for the full automation lifecycle.
What Made It Unique
- Unified automation setup for brokerage accounts, ETFs, mutual funds, and IRAs in a single flow
- Cross-account conflict detection — prevents contribution limit violations before they happen
- Persistent plan dashboard with upcoming investment schedule and full contribution history
- Plain-language explanations of IRS contribution rules and annual limits embedded in context
- Mobile-first design for setup, monitoring, and modification on any device
The Process
Discovery & Research
Weeks 1–3Reviewed call center data, customer feedback, and analytics to map where customers were dropping off and what questions were driving the most inbound support volume.
Regulatory & Compliance Review
Weeks 3–5Worked with Vanguard's compliance team to map IRS contribution rules, annual limits, and required disclosures across all account types — ensuring these informed the UX architecture rather than being bolted on later.
User Flows & Information Architecture
Weeks 5–8Designed the full automation setup flow across four account types, with branching logic for contribution limit rules and scheduling conflicts.
Wireframes & Prototyping
Weeks 8–12Built low-fidelity wireframes and clickable prototypes for the setup flow, plan dashboard, and modification and cancellation journeys.
Usability Testing
Weeks 12–15Tested with 12 participants including new and existing Vanguard investors. Key focus: comprehension of contribution limits, confidence at confirmation, and ease of ongoing plan management.
High-Fidelity Design & Launch
Weeks 15–20Delivered production designs, coordinated with engineering on implementation, and monitored post-launch adoption metrics and call center volume.
What We Built
A comprehensive solution covering strategy, design, development, and growth.
Product Strategy
Scoped the Automatic Investment Plan feature around the highest-friction customer pain points and aligned it with Vanguard's long-term digital channel goals.
UX Research
Call center data analysis, customer feedback synthesis, and usability testing with 12 participants across new and experienced investor profiles.
Compliance-Informed Design
Embedded IRS contribution rules, annual limits, and required disclosures directly into the UX architecture — making compliance invisible to the user experience.
UX & UI Design
End-to-end automation setup flow for four account types, plan management dashboard, and modification and cancellation flows.
Mobile Engineering
Mobile-first implementation of the full AIP lifecycle, optimized for common investment tasks on iOS and Android.
Design System
Contributed automation-specific patterns to the Vanguard design system: scheduling components, contribution limit indicators, and plan status displays.
The Results
Real metrics that demonstrate the impact of strategic design and engineering.
Increase in automatic investment plan sign-ups post-launch
Drop in AIP-related customer service contacts
Brokerage, ETF, mutual fund, and IRA in one flow
Average time from start to confirmed first investment
Validated with real investors before launch
First fully mobile-optimized investment automation on the platform
“This is placeholder content — a real client testimonial will be added once confirmed. The Automatic Investment Plan redesign drove meaningful improvements in enrollment, plan confidence, and mobile adoption across the Vanguard customer base.”
Tech Stack
Modern, scalable technologies chosen for performance and developer experience.
Design
Web
Infrastructure
Tools
Why It Worked
Compliance as UX
Rather than treating regulatory requirements as constraints, we embedded contribution rules and disclosures into the design itself — reducing cognitive load while ensuring full compliance.
Unified Cross-Account Architecture
Designing a single flow for all four account types eliminated the fragmentation that was driving confusion and support calls.
Transparency Builds Trust
Surfacing upcoming investment schedules and contribution history in a persistent dashboard transformed 'set it and forget it' anxiety into customer confidence.
Mobile-First Investment Automation
Prioritizing mobile meant the feature reached customers where they were actually engaging — driving higher adoption than previous desktop-first releases.