Research scope
We studied how people in New Zealand and elsewhere approach investing, then focused interviews on non-Sharesies users, including people who never joined and people who had stopped using the product.
Sharesies • 2022
Investing 101
A research-led concept to help prospective investors understand the basics, reduce anxiety, and start their investing journey with more confidence.
The brief
Why many potential investors never begin.
Sharesies makes stock market investing more accessible, but the team wanted to better understand the barriers stopping new users from taking the first step. Our three-person team was asked to identify those barriers and explore how they differed across users.
The goal was to move from problem framing to a concept that could support first-time investors with clearer education, reduced friction, and stronger confidence.
Discovery
Desk research, interviews, and synthesis.
What emerged
We mapped 32 findings into eight key insights. A strong pattern was that investing felt intimidating, overly complex, and culturally distant from many potential users.
Problem framing
We used the research to define a clear “how might we” direction around helping people overcome uncertainty and build enough understanding to start.
Development
From workshops to an educational hub.
After a workshop with Sharesies, we narrowed our focus and tested a few concept directions. We briefly explored embedding learning into sign-up, but research pointed us toward a better opportunity: improve the educational journey itself rather than adding more friction to onboarding.
We reviewed competitor learning sites and found a consistent pattern: strong investing education combines step-by-step content, engaging visuals, interactive tools, and simple explanations.
That led to two low-fidelity concepts, followed by quick testing with inexperienced investors and then a high-fidelity concept built around structured learning, illustrations, quizzes, and practical written content.
Outcome
A mini course for investing basics.
The final concept was an “Investing Basics Mini Course” inside the Sharesies learning experience. It gave learners a guided path through the basics with short explanations, interactive elements, and clear language tied directly to user needs identified during research.
The project reinforced a few core lessons for me: strong team communication matters, every design decision needs a clear reason, and adaptability is essential when the problem space shifts.