Building habits and boosting engagement for investors
Alinea — Fall 2021
ROLE
Product Design Consultant
DURATION
2 weeks
TOOLS
Figma
TEAM
Alinea Founders
What is Alinea?
Alinea is a Y Combinator-backed investing app for GenZs to invest in what matters to them, like Clean Energy, Blockchain, or Women-Led companies.
In a week with Alinea's founders, I co-led efforts to reimagine investing as a lifestyle habit, focusing on education, community, usability, and social impact—now core features in the app.
Context
Alinea is an investing app for people who don’t know how to invest.
Just like creating a playlist on Spotify, Alinea empowers users to curate personalized stock ‘playlists’ based on their values.
But how do you get people who are not interested in investing to start to invest?
Marketing Alinea to first-time investors who weren’t exposed or weren’t interested in investing proved to be difficult, and it was costing them many potential users.
Research
People wanted to invest, but they just didn’t stick with it.
Investing often didn’t fit into users' daily routines, making it easy to forget—like a failed New Year’s resolution. Habit-building follows a loop: Routine > Reward > Cue. Missing any stage leads to failure. To reinforce this cycle, I explored ways the app could target each stage effectively.
Research
What’s missing in building habits on Alinea?
Stronger cues
Habits start with a strong trigger. Alinea could better implement pre-commitment and personalized cues, like reminders tied to users' routines or streak-based nudges.
Small wins, large rewards
Investing can feel overwhelming, but breaking it into smaller, actionable steps makes it manageable. These small wins provide a sense of progress, motivating users to return.
Friendly competition
Features like leaderboards or celebrating friends’ achievements on a social feed could drive accountability and encourage some friendly competition to increase engagement.
How might we integrate investing into daily routines to help users build consistent habits?
Create a habit-driven experience that aligns with users' lifestyles every single day.
The solution
Building the habit of investing through small actions, rewards, and social connection.
Alinea makes investing approachable by breaking it down into daily actions. Create playlists, learn one financial term a day, and check your feed to earn rewards and track progress. Focusing on bite-sized habits rather than end goals shifts investing from a chore to a productive part of everyday life.
The cue
More meaningful notifications.
The routine
Daily routines designed to stick in under five minutes.
Small, consistent actions are turned into lasting habits with routines. Learning a new term, checking your friends’ investments on the social feed, or tracking your impact builds a sense of progress and accomplishment throughout the day.
Bite-sized knowledge everyday
Action
Users engage with stories or financial terms daily to build knowledge.
Routine
- Play the "Daily Term Quiz" in the dictionary.
- Complete a bite-sized story to unlock new concepts.
- Save terms to the library for future reference.
Why it works
These small learning tasks fit easily into a daily routine and provide quick wins that encourage consistency.
Building a community of investors
Action
Users interact with friends’ activities or trending playlists.
Routine
- Check the social feed to see what friends are investing in.
- Like, comment, or explore playlists shared by others.
- Join or view leaderboard rankings for streaks or challenges.
Why it works
Social motivation keeps users accountable and adds a sense of belonging to their investing habits.
Creating an impact
Action
Users check the impact of their investments on key social issues.
Routine
- Review impact stats (e.g., CO2 reduced, companies supported) in your playlist wrapped.
- Explore purpose-driven stocks and add them to playlists.
- Share their impact stats with friends for encouragement.
Why it works
Connecting investing to tangible outcomes reinforces motivation and makes it rewarding to engage daily.
The reward
Money and other motivators.
Alinea makes investing rewarding by celebrating progress. Users unlock badges like 'Financial Explorer', and track their growth with visual progress bars. Top investors are also rewarded by being displayed on the leaderboard, giving a non-monetary incentive to invest.
