Case Study

Re-imagining the Schwab mobile account summary as a dashboard

How content structure and language reconciled competing user needs — giving active traders control and long-term investors clarity within a single shared experience.

The problem

One experience. Two very different users.

Following the TD Ameritrade migration, a significant cohort of incoming clients arrived with expectations shaped by a more dashboard-oriented experience. Schwab's existing mobile account summary felt static and inflexible by comparison, particularly for active traders who relied on speed, customization, and immediate access to market data.

The design tension was real: long-term investors needed reassuring simplicity, while active traders needed control and density. The constraint was equally real: one shared experience had to serve both.

The core challenge was architectural. Adding features wasn't the answer. The content model had to route different users to what they needed without creating friction for anyone else.

The strategy

Structure and language as the control surface

Working cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering, I helped develop a strategy centered on configurability: a Dashboard mode introduced alongside the existing Accounts view, shifting the experience from fixed sections to customizable content modules. The goal was to offer choice without overwhelming, letting users self-select into the experience that matched their needs rather than forcing a single model on everyone.

The content model was grounded in three jobs to be done: understand (how am I doing? what changed today?), research (what's moving? what should I look at?), and trade (act quickly when ready). Research showed users prioritized these in a consistent order — understand first, then trade, then research, which drove the final module hierarchy and labeling decisions.

The process

Content blocking. Card sorting. Validation with real users.

Before visual design began, I used content blocking to define structural logic: what modules existed, what they contained, how they were labeled, and how they related to one another. This allowed the team to validate information architecture decisions before any pixels were committed.

Internal card sorting confirmed that the "Dashboard" label matched mental models across both existing Schwab clients and incoming TDA users — a non-trivial alignment problem given the different vocabularies each group brought. Quick Action labels and module names were tested against the jobs-to-be-done framework across user types. Polished designs were then validated with both active traders and passive investors before launch.

Outcomes

Strong adoption. Better sentiment. No tradeoffs.

The dashboard metaphor was immediately understood by users across both segments. Active traders felt empowered by the configurability and speed of the new experience; passive investors reported no sense of being overwhelmed by the additional complexity. Both segments got what they needed. No separate experience required.