Featured Case Study 02: Paven
Reducing psychological friction in complex financial decision-making
UX Writing · Content Modeling · Interactive Guidance · Content Systems
Paven was a financial well-being product and employee benefit designed for Meta employees.
The central challenge was a behavioral paradox: employees could be highly compensated and still feel stressed, uncertain, and avoidant around financial decisions.
50% reported medium-to-high financial stress.
31% reported major financial stress.
62% felt they lacked the guidance and knowledge needed to make confident financial decisions.
The problem was not simply a lack of information.
It was helping users move from uncertainty and avoidance toward concrete action.
As Senior Content Designer, I led content strategy and UX writing for financial-goal experiences, working with Product, Design, Research, financial subject-matter experts, and stakeholders.
Content Design Interventions
1. Financial Goals Model
Rather than organizing the product around financial products and institutions, we organized it around what users were trying to accomplish.
Research identified five foundational goals:
Buying a Home
Saving for Education
Managing Debt
Building Emergency Savings
Retirement
These became the basis for a reusable model:
Goal → Guidance → Decision → Vehicle → Action → Progress
The system helped translate abstract financial complexity into product experiences grounded in real user intent.
83% financial goal adoption provided strong evidence that users engaged with the model.
2. Retirement Goal Engine
Retirement became the first major implementation because it was both universal and psychologically distant.
The flow started with relevance rather than a dense financial questionnaire.
A 3-question starter asked for:
retirement age
current income
expected monthly retirement spending
Those inputs generated an immediate personalized projection, creating an early quick win before users were asked to engage with greater complexity.
The experience then moved users from:
Imagine → Estimate → Understand → Act
3. Dilemma-First Framing
Financial anxiety was treated as part of the interaction problem rather than something to write around.
Instead of assuming users were ready to proceed, the experience acknowledged blockers and competing priorities directly.
The content helped users think through questions such as:
How does this affect my other goals?
What if I cannot save as much as I want?
What happens if I change my assumptions?
What tradeoffs am I actually making?
This allowed sensitive data inputs and unfamiliar financial decisions to feel more manageable.
4. 401(k) Guidance + Interactive Decision Support
Once users established a Retirement Goal, they could connect financial vehicles that supported it.
The 401(k) experience introduced:
balance
contribution amount
pre-tax vs. Roth
employer match
contribution limits
projected future growth
Progressive disclosure, contextual tooltips, modals, calculators, and projections helped explain concepts at the moment they became relevant.
Content had to work inside the interaction:
What am I changing?
Why does it matter?
What changed in the result?
The Retirement Dashboard then turned goal setup into an ongoing experience for monitoring progress, adjusting assumptions, managing vehicles, and identifying next actions.
5. Voice and Tone System
Paven needed a voice that could guide users through sensitive decisions without becoming clinical, prescriptive, or patronizing.
I helped codify the Voice of Paven around five principles:
Street Smart
Relatable, not jargon-heavy.
Direct
Clear, not clinical.
Mentoring
Guiding, not overbearing.
Practical
Actionable, not abstract.
Empathetic
Supportive, not patronizing.
These principles informed goal setup, financial explanations, modals, tooltips, dashboards, nudges, confirmations, and permission requests.
6. Content Pattern Library
The work was codified into a reusable Figma pattern library for future goals and vehicles.
The system included patterns for:
onboarding
dilemma framing
goal setup
vehicle introductions
calculators
tooltips
modals
dashboards
system messaging
voice and tone
interaction guidance
The objective was not to create one successful flow.
It was to create a repeatable way of designing financial guidance.
7. Permission Design
Push permission was treated as a UX decision, not merely a line of copy.
Rather than asking immediately, the request appeared after the product had demonstrated value.
The underlying question was:
When has the product earned the right to ask?
That value-led approach contributed to a 33.65% increase in push subscriptions.
The Impact
83%
Financial goal adoption
+82% YoY
Benefit utilization across the broader Paven program
+58%
Financial coaching appointments
+33.65%
Push subscriptions
5 foundational financial goals
Supported by a reusable goal-and-vehicle content model and multiple financial-vehicle patterns
Strategic Capabilities
How I Work
1. Structure
Turn complexity into usable flows, taxonomies, content models, and decision paths.
2. Guide
Write interaction content that helps users choose, continue, understand tradeoffs, and recover from friction.
3. Scale
Create reusable patterns, governance, and documentation that improve consistency and delivery speed.
4. Align
Connect user needs with product goals, business requirements, subject-matter expertise, compliance, and brand voice.
5. Lead
Guide cross-functional teams through ambiguity, tradeoffs, and complex product decisions.
Senior content design is product infrastructure.
It is the connective tissue between what the business needs, how the product works, and what the user understands.