Manulife Moments
Designing proactive support for life transitions
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Problem:
Young professionals lack a trusted system that puts their life moments into context and translates them into impact, leaving them unprepared when life changes
Solution:
Manulife can build trust and loyalty during moments that matter most, making it the default choice and driving long-term customer value.
Project Type:
Context: Design competition
Timeline: 1 month
Tools: Figma, Figma Make, Miro, Canva
Group size: 5
My role:
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Facilitated team meetings and ideation sessions
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Guided design decisions and team workflows
- Created the presentation strategy/slides
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Conducted research interviews
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Medium-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes
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Usability testing to refine prototypes
Research
Structure
Ideate
Design
Research
Understanding Users
Challenge Prompt:
“How might Manulife reimagine its health and wealth ecosystem to become a trusted lifelong partner for Canadians — moving beyond traditional insurance and financial products over the next decade?”
Market gap
We analyzed 15 banking and insurance platforms, including Manulife, and found a key gap: today’s platforms manage health and finances separately, but none help users understand how their health, wealth, and life transitions connect.
User research
We interviewed 10 young professionals aged 22–30, a group actively forming long-term financial habits while navigating frequent career and life transitions.
Key insights
1. Relevance
Insurance felt abstract until a major life transition made it real, like getting laid off.
2. Transitions
Financial independence often increases stress instead of confidence.
3. Trust
Users wanted clearer, more personalized guidance to feel confident in making the right decisions.
4. Health + Wealth
Participants saw health and finances as deeply connected, but no platform helped them with both.
Opportunity
Over 4 million Canadians aged 22–30 are navigating these transitions right now. Many are underserved, unsure where to start, and forming habits that will shape the rest of their lives.
This created an opportunity for Manulife to support users earlier and build long-term relationships through key life moments.
Structure
Journey map
The user journey map allowed us to visualize our users' journey through the app for a major life event (layoff).
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User Journey Overview
Step 1–2: User explores life events on an interactive map. The system auto-fills financial and health data.
Step 3: User adjusts sliders to simulate outcomes but feels unsure and overwhelmed.
Step 4–5: The preparation checklist breaks goals into health and finance, giving the user confidence.
Ideate
Exploring Solutions
We created low-fidelity prototypes in Figma to inform design decisions.
Life Map
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Design Decisions:
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Designed the life map as a timeline of life moments instead of insurance products to make it feel more human and relatable.
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Used a Duolingo-inspired approach for a more playful, engaging experience.
Life impact simulator
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Design Decisions:
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Simplified complex health and wealth data into an easy-to-understand, adjustable view.
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Helps users see how their choices impact future stability based on their inputs.
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Chose a more visual layout to make numbers easier to understand at a glance.
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Yearly recap
Design Decisions:
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Reframes data into a positive reflection of progress to build motivation.
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Designed with a Spotify Wrapped-inspired approach to better engage young adults.
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Focuses on making achievements feel more personal and shareable.
Build
Final Design & Iterations
High-fidelity mock-ups were created in Figma Make and informed by our usability testing results and medium-fidelity prototypes.
Life map with dynamic interactions
Designing a timeline that helps users visualize and prepare for key life transitions.
The biggest changes included moving the adding a legend for clarity, new button on the side so it doesn't get lost while scrolling, and removing the profile information since it's obvious information.
Life impact simulator to make impact visible
Turning complex health and wealth data into a simple, interactive view of future readiness
The biggest changes were including health factors to incorporate the health aspect from our brief, removing the graph as it was difficult to understand, and making the impact analysis more clear.
Yearly recap to reflect on progress
Reframing yearly activity into a motivating recap of personal growth and milestones
The biggest change was having the yearly recap items show one at a time, making it more engaging, a storytelling-style recap inspired by Spotify Wrapped to increase emotional engagement and shareability.
Our final designs help users navigate life transitions with greater clarity and confidence by integrating their health, finances, and future planning into a single supportive experience.
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What I learned
I learned that designing for health and financial decision-making requires balancing clarity, trust, and emotional support. Users connected more with guidance around life transitions than traditional insurance-focused experiences.
I also gained experience facilitating brainstorming sessions and helping align the team around a shared product vision throughout the design process.
What I would do next
Next, I would conduct additional usability testing with a wider range of users and accessibility needs.
I would also further refine onboarding and feature discoverability within the Manulife ecosystem, while exploring how personalization could evolve over time through connected health and financial data.