Launching YouTrip Family
Project context
SCOPE
New features, new flows, new service flows
The new card programme created new features and user flows that demanded new in-app flows and service design for new scenarios.
My role
Launch lead
I took a defined vision through to launch:
Fleshed out secondary flows and edge cases
Closing experience and system gaps
Coordinated and directed cross-functional teams to get ready for launch
Top-ups · P2P transfers · FX Exchange · Card & account management · Parental controls · Child onboarding · Physical card packaging · Child app · Conversion of Child to Standard accounts · CS FAQs & SOPs · Internal tooling
Impact 01
Closing experience gaps of initial designs
my approach
Adding functional and visual polish
I analysed where designs were not truly meeting the needs of parent and child users and closed those gaps, resulting in experiential and usability gains across navigation, clarity, security, and ownership.
IMPACT 02
Derisked onboarding failures
Onboarding was part of the happy flows delivered before I was brought on the project.
Although I was told it had been approved, I audited it as part of my responsibility as Launch lead.
identified risk
A complex process with untested assumptions
Onboarding was a complex process that spread across app and physical surfaces.
The original designs assumed users would operate with perfect knowledge of the system. This was not a fair assumption.
Yet, leadership was eager to move directly into development.
solution
Testing uncovered usability issues, which were fixed before launch
I convinced stakeholders that the risk was worth investigating with usability testing. This uncovered 3 critical issues that would have compromised a smooth launch rollout.
These findings made the team commit resources to redesign the process.We successfully increased task success rates in internal usability tests, and had no issues at launch.
4-5x
Improvements to task success
IMPACT 03
Redesign for
dual card ownership
The new card model presented several issues that needed to be resolved for a good cards experience
Solution 01
A tiered permission model to resolve abnormal states
Working with Product and Legal, I established a decision model across all 15+ card and account states that balanced child safety and parental trust with user experience at payment.
low risK
Optimise for better card usage experience
Children are allowed to resolve card and app access issues like PIN resets so that they can easily pay and withdraw.
Higher stakes
Optimise for safety
Only parents can resolve safety and high-impact issues like fraud and account suspensions.
SolutioN 02
Creating shared understanding with notifications
To keep both cardholders aware of the latest card states, we surfaced card statuses both in-app and through notifications.
Optimised lockscreen experience
The phone lockscreen was a key touchpoint that enabled ambiently monitor their cards without opening the app.
Copy was specially designed to help parents easily manage multiple accounts, and instantly communicate to both receivers of any relevant next steps.
Behind the scenes
All 15+ In-app flows were tweaked to fit both the permissions model and notifications system. This is an example of child and parent flows mapped out for one scenario: app PIN reset.
YouTrip's in-app alert system also had to change due to the dual card ownership model
Within YouTrip, users are typically informed of abnormal card states with a banner of the homescreen.
YouTrip's default in-app alert system is a carousel banner on the homescreen.
Engineering limits the ideal in-app alerts system
At tech grooming, engineers pointed out that structural limitations meant our existing in-app alerts system couldn't easily surface Child card issues on the default banner section on a parent's homescreen.
Surfacing child card issues on the parent's Homescreen was deemed too high effort by Engineering.
I immediately identified usability problems with this approach:
It would make important alerts easy to miss on a parent's homescreen and create friction to resolution.
my contribution
Led cross-functional negotiations to preserve usability
To ensure Product and Engineering had a clear picture of what was at stake, I illustrated the costs and benefits of various options, and presented them to my working level counterparts:
This helped us get buy-in to make UX and UI changes necessary to preserve usability. After alignment, I iterated the core solution to the final design:
Shipped
New alert banner system with dynamic order
The shipped design implements dynamic order, and uses motion to get a user's attention. The order and appearance of child accounts are triaged by severity and recency to ensure parents see the most pressing issues first. Coupled with the PN and email notifications, we were confident parents would not miss important alerts.
IMPACT 04
Created a more unified product experience by changing how teams worked together
CHALLENGE
Siloed teams led to disjointed experiences
Traditionally, YouTrip launched products in-silos. After the Product team was done making the product, Marketing and CS articles were expected to 'do their thing' for the launch.
This workflow created disjointed experiences across the app, marketing and CS experiences.
Approach
Involving Product, Marketing and CS more collaboratively
I took the initiative to reach out to colleagues in these teams and build on each team's unique strengths.
With marketing, we co-developed the visual direction. This resulted in an end product was visually much stronger and unified across the product's various surfaces.
In-app visuals before and after the sync in visual direction. The AI slop on the initial Splash screen wasn't my decision, but we were able to replace it with a higher quality visual for the shipped product.
Representation for YouTrip's diverse user base: Before and after my feedback to Marketing
Directing CS
With CS, we recognised that CS didn't have sufficient product expertise to develop a useful FAQ for users, but excelled at creating SOPs.
As such, we divided work based on our individual strengths: my PM and I took charge of creating FAQs for both in-app and web entry points, while they focused on creating CS SOPs with our feedback.
Impact
We launched in May 2026. Uptake exceeded our expectations:
2.5x
projected adoption target in the first month
Moreover, there was no spike in CS queries regarding the feature, signalling a smooth card activation and onboarding for parents and children.
