Creating a reassuring homepage

The consumerfinance.gov homepage is the public face of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). During a change in administration, the agency sought to refresh the homepage to reflect a new vision while continuing to serve millions of consumers seeking trusted financial guidance.

I led the redesign of the homepage, creating an experience that better introduced the CFPB and guided visitors to the resources they needed most.

About the work

Challenge

Redesign the CFPB’s homepage to clarify the agency’s role and make critical financial resources easy to find. Balance organizational goals with user needs and deliver a reassuring, accessible experience.

Project team

UX/UI designer (me)
User researcher
Product manager
Front end developer
Back end developer

My lead responsibilities

Product design
Art direction

I also contributed to…

User research
Workshop facilitation

Understanding user needs

To ground the redesign in evidence rather than assumptions, my team synthesized findings from previous usability studies, web analytics, and interviews with CFPB call center representatives.

The research revealed two key insights.

First, many visitors came to the site with urgent goals, most commonly to submit a complaint or find guidance on topics such as debt collection, prepaid cards, and credit reports.

Second, many people didn't understand what the CFPB is or how the agency could help them. The homepage needed to do more than provide navigation. It needed to clearly communicate the CFPB's purpose and value.

Defining the experience

We facilitated discussions with stakeholders to align on the homepage's purpose and the experience it should provide.

We defined three guiding principles:

Introduce the CFPB and explain its role.
Help consumers quickly reach the information or service they need.
Create an experience that feels reassuring, empowering, and supportive.

These principles became the foundation for every subsequent design decision.

Page goals

Tone

Workshops with stakeholders helped us articulate the page’s goals and tone

Designing the homepage

To design the page, I conduced a competitive analysis of other government and financial tech homepages, sketched with stakeholders and teammates to generate ideas, and created wireframes followed by a prototype.

Prototype I created for usability testing

Validating the design

We evaluated the homepage through three complementary research methods.

First-impression testing assessed participants' immediate understanding of the page and the organization behind it. While most participants understood the page's purpose and organization, testing revealed opportunities to make the CFPB's identity as a government agency more explicit.

Usability testing confirmed that participants could successfully navigate the page and predict where links would take them, validating the overall information hierarchy.

Desirability testing informed the visual direction. When shown four introductory visuals, participants consistently preferred a photo collage option. Participants saw themselves reflected in this imagery and felt it did a good job representing the services and financial situations addressed by the CFPB.

Together, these findings shaped the final design before launch.

“This page is very encouraging and supportive. It speaks to me one-on-one that hey, I’m here for you and will protect you from financial harm.”

— Research participant

Four introductory image options I created for desirability testing

The result

We launched the redesigned homepage after incorporating insights from testing.

Follow-up analytics showed strong engagement with the introductory content and key links. Routine usability testing also confirmed that consumers could successfully complete one of the homepage's most important tasks: locating the Submit a complaint tool. Participants achieved a 100% task success rate, demonstrating that the redesigned homepage effectively guided users to one of the CFPB's most critical services.

With

24M

active site users, the homepage is the public face of the CFPB.