Leading consumers to critical info
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) offers thousands of resources to help people make informed financial decisions, but many of those resources were difficult to discover. The site's information architecture reflected the agency's internal organization rather than the way consumers think about their financial lives, making it especially challenging for people facing urgent financial problems to find the guidance they needed.
After my team redesigned the site's information architecture around consumer-centered money topics, I led the design of a new suite of pages that introduce those money topics and help consumers quickly navigate to the information most relevant to them.
Today, the CFPB has 12 money topic sections, and seven of their pages rank among the 25 most-visited pages on a website with more than 14,000 pages.
About the work
Challenge
Transform a complex website into an experience that helps millions of consumers quickly find trustworthy financial guidance. Shift from an organization-centered information architecture to one that reflects consumers’ needs and mental models.
Project team
UX/UI designer (me)
User researcher
Product manager
Content strategist
Front end developer
Back end developer
My lead responsibilities
Product design
Art direction
I also contributed to…
Content strategy
User research
Workshop facilitation
Understanding the problem
The CFPB's previous navigation made it difficult for consumers to discover educational resources through exploration. Information was organized around internal programs and services rather than consumer goals, forcing people to know where to look before they could find help.
This was particularly problematic for consumers navigating financial hardship. While I had previously redesigned Ask CFPB, a large collection of financial questions and answers, its content remained difficult to discover because it wasn't reflected in the site's primary navigation.
To address this, my team conducted a discovery effort to rethink how consumer content should be organized. After two rounds of tree testing with 243 participants, we validated an information architecture organized around money topics, mirroring the mental models consumers demonstrated during research.
With the new navigation defined, the next challenge was to design landing pages that would help people orient themselves, understand their options, and quickly reach the right information.
Designing for consumer mindsets
Before starting design, we wanted to think about consumers' emotional and behavioral context. We revisited foundational research conducted by IDEO with 32 consumers representing a wide range of backgrounds, financial situations, and abilities. One of the most valuable findings was that consumers move through different "modes of action" depending on their circumstances, from panic when facing an immediate financial problem to planning when working toward long-term goals.
“Maybe I could pay the loan people off and everything could be clear. But they see my credit report and they say I’m not to be trusted. Nobody’s going to accept me nowhere. I can’t achieve my goals.”
“I try to look at spending versus budgeting, but things happen. I sometimes didn’t get rent on time, so things happened.”
“I guess I know [my payday loans] didn’t kind of go away, but I don’t know what happened with that. I don’t have to worry about it until it worries about me, I guess.”
Valuable insights were buried within lengthy research reports, so I synthesized them into a set of "mindset cards" that distill key behaviors, motivations, and needs. The cards became a shared reference throughout the project and helped the team make decisions grounded in user needs.
Cards I created to surface consumer mental models and modes of action
Defining a content strategy
To determine what content the money topic pages should contain, we conducted an audit of consumer-facing resources across the site. In addition to documenting details such as a page's purpose and primary audience, we analyzed performance metrics such as page views, engagement, bounce rate, and exit rate. The audit helped identify high-value resources and reveal content gaps.
Combined with insights from consumer research, the audit also helped us define a set of content categories: key terms, how-to guides, know your rights, and common issues.
Using these categories, we created wireframes to articulate a content and design structure to use across the money topic landing pages.
Content audit I contributed to
Initial landing page wireframes I created
Validating the experience
Through workshops with content owners and subject matter experts, we further refined the content strategy and identified specific content to include. And, using debt collection as the first topic, I created interactive design prototypes.
Usability testing the prototypes validated many of our design decisions. Participants understood the design hierarchy and content groupings, but a few category labels caused confusion. And, although users rarely interacted with the sidebar, they described the CFPB phone number and "About us" content as signals of credibility and trust, which reinforced the value of keeping those elements.
The findings directly informed revisions before launch.
Worksheet we collaboratively filled out with content owners and subject matter experts to identify user paths and core content
Debt collection section I prototyped
Creating calming imagery
The pages needed to do more than organize information. They needed to reassure consumers navigating stressful financial situations.
I led the visual direction for the new money topic sections, facilitating brainstorm sessions to concept imagery that conveys calm, clarity, and confidence. From developing concepts and planning shoots to art directing photography and editing final images, I established a visual language that complements the content and supports the emotional needs of users.
Photoshoots I art directed and final money topic images
The result
The money topic sections launched incrementally and now include 12 sections.
Follow-up usability testing confirmed that consumers could successfully scan the pages, understand the organization, and locate relevant information. Participants also continued to cite the CFPB phone number and organizational information as trust-building elements.
Today, seven pages within the money topic sections rank among the 25 most-visited pages on the CFPB’s site, which contains more than 14,000 pages. The debt collection landing page has become the site's sixth most-visited page, demonstrating that the new information architecture and landing pages significantly improved consumers' ability to discover critical financial guidance.
7
pages are within the 25 most-trafficked pages on the CFPB’s site
Final navigation and money topic pages I designed
