$talk

A mobile and web product that improved employee performance by supporting a culture of appreciation, open feedback, and continuous learning.

$talk app interface showing financial insights

ROLE

UX Designer

TIMELINE

1 month

TEAM

Two Frontend Developer

Two Backend Developer

One Designer

SKILLS

  • UX Research
  • User Interviews
  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping
  • Visual Design

TOOLS

  • Figma
  • Notion
  • Python (API from X)
  • HTML / CSS
  • Javascript

Introduction

On the Winter Quarter of 2024-25, there was a privilege to be a part of prestigious group Likelion's Hackathon program going against the team of 5 students from Korea who have been selected among 1500 candidates.

As a US team member, we had to follow our studies and researches toward our goal of winning the competition.

$talk was created to address these challenges by providing a user-friendly platform that breaks down complex investment concepts, offers clear insights, and empowers users to invest with confidence. Many young investors feel overwhelmed by the complexity and noise of the financial world. $talk was created to simplify investing, build financial confidence, and empower users to make informed decisions through clear insights and trustworthy guidance. The topic/guideline of the project was as follows:

Freedom in picking the topic with an AI feature

01

Use 2 AI APIs

Integrate and leverage two different AI APIs to enhance the platform's capabilities.

02

Plan a global-scale application

Design the solution with scalability in mind, targeting a worldwide audience.

03

The state of being viral is the key

Focus on features and strategies that can help the application achieve viral growth.

Process

1. Discovery

Research findings and insights

To ground the product in real user needs, I analyzed existing financial platforms and conducted user interviews with young investors. This helped uncover common pain points such as information overload, lack of financial confidence, and difficulty understanding investment terminology.

2. Ideation

Initial concepts and wireframes

Using insights from the discovery phase, I brainstormed features aimed at demystifying the investment process. I sketched low-fidelity wireframes to explore ideas that emphasized clarity, trust, and guidance such as simplified stock summaries and personalized risk explanations.

3. Design

Final design mockups

I translated the validated concepts into polished mockups and interactive prototypes. These were used in usability testing to refine the interface, ensuring that the experience felt approachable and empowering for novice investors.

Goal

Helping customers who seek fast and accurate investments from social media feeds, while connecting them with detailed analysis and experts

Target Audience

The platform aims to empower users by offering digestible, AI-generated insights and a supportive, intuitive interface.

  • 20–35 years old
  • Beginner to intermediate in financial knowledge
  • Seeking to build investment habits, understand the market, and make informed financial decisions with minimal stress

Problem Statement

How might we help beginner investors make confident decisions by simplifying complex financial information but through live social media feed from influencers?

User Research

User Interview Key Insights

  • During the hackathon in Silicon Valley, my team interviewed three potential users from diverse backgrounds from tech to VC (venture capitalist) to gather insights on their investment habits, challenges with financial platforms, and expectations for intuitive decision-making tools.
  • Interviewees were worried about the validity of the AI response to the financial decisions because uncertainty and fluctuation in social media feeds equal the unseemly responses from the AIs.
  • How to attract the users by could be a problem, where there are so many competitors out in the area, like Robinhood or any other trading apps.
  • Apps that are frequently used are not well-made for beginners, but they also mentioned that most users enter with certain knowledge before doing stocks.
  • Biggest want / need: The usefulness of the information from the app
Emily Park user persona photo

User Persona

Emily Park

Student

"I want to feel confident about where I'm putting my money, not just follow the hype. If I'm going to invest, I need clear, reliable info I can actually understand."
  • Emily Park is a 22-year-old Business Economics student in UC Berkeley, currently interning at a fintech startup.
  • She's curious about investing but often finds financial platforms either too complex or too vague.
  • She wants to build long-term financial stability and feel confident in her investment decisions.
  • She's motivated by the desire to be financially independent and make informed choices without relying solely on social media trends.
  • Emily worries about falling for misinformation or hype, especially when she doesn't fully understand a stock's risks.

Competitive Analysis

Robinhood

Pros

  • Easy to use, Free

Cons

  • Overload of information and unimportant features that may confuse the users

Bloomberg & CNBC

Pros

  • Very Informative, Real-time finance news

Cons

  • Over-abundant amount of news, Hard to use for beginners

Brainstorming

Whiteboard brainstorming photo 1

Exploring Features, Flow, and Data Use

  • We sketched out card-style UI components to showcase trending stock topics, AI summaries, and user commentary
  • AI-powered summaries were conceptualized to help users quickly understand stock trends, including time-based analysis, price fluctuations, and sentiment breakdowns.
Whiteboard brainstorming photo 2

Interface Drafting and Navigation

  • We outlined a home feed layout consisting of stock cards, community posts, and data visualizations, with attention to visual hierarchy.
  • More detailed UI component wireframes were drawn, showing tabs, notification icons, and nested content (e.g., a tweet inside a card within the main feed).

Determining the Visual Design Language

Visual design group illustration

As $talk aims to make financial conversations more approachable and socially engaging for beginners and experts, our visual design language needed to strike a careful balance between credibility, clarity, and community warmth.

Images

  • We curated images that reflected a calm, approachable, and socially grounded tone. Clean, focused workspaces and soft, human elements like a piggy bank or handwritten notes helped us prioritize clarity, trust, and emotional accessibility.

Font

  • We curated images that reflected a calm, approachable, and socially grounded tone. Clean, focused workspaces and soft, human elements like a piggy bank or handwritten notes helped us prioritize clarity, trust, and emotional accessibility.

Final Product

The final prototype of $talk features a clean, user-friendly interface designed to simplify investing for young users. It includes a customizable dashboard, a jargon-free chatbot, and interactive tools for exploring market trends. Built in Figma, the design was refined through user testing to ensure clarity, usability, and relevance.

Key Features

Faster Information Through SNS

Faster Information Than Major Media Through Social Media (SNS)

In our MVP, we leverage X's API to quickly retrieve data, ensuring that users get the most up-to-date information faster than traditional media outlets.

AI-Powered Analysis

AI-Powered Precision Analysis & Forecasting for Tweets

Using generative AI to analyze the given Tweet from multiple angles and provide stock forecast predictions through fine-tuning and RAG.

Personalized Portfolio

View preferred influencers and stocks at a glance through a personalized portfolio

Helping individuals invest more systematically in their areas of expertise through a personalized detailed portfolio.

Next Steps & Reflections

Party face

Automated stock investment system

Not only alerts and predictions, but also integrates automatic trading functionality

Bitcoin coin

Cryptocurrency investment option

Expanding into the cryptocurrency market, where high volatility and the influence of social media are maximized

Praying face

Enhancing AI reliability

Improving AI performance and reliability by training on high-quality data from various social media platforms

Team presenting $talk
  • Presenting $talk at a professional venue was a defining moment, letting us share our process and see our work resonate in real time.
  • This experience reinforced that good design is about creating meaningful connections and building tools that are both functional and human.

Thank you for reading!

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to connect.