Contovista
Helping Swiss businesses understand their financial health without needing financial expertise.
I led the end-to-end design of Financial Key Metrics for Contovista's AI-powered Business Finance Manager, transforming complex transaction data into actionable financial guidance for thousands of small businesses using digital banking.
Role
Team
Industry
Finance, AI
Year
2025
Key signals
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
14 users helped validate the direction.
Conduct qualitative research to assess which financial metrics are more relevant and essential for business’ decisions.
2 PROTOTYPES
Two prototype directions tested to shape the final outcome.
The strongest direction helped move and clarify the expectation on the user when it comes to awareness, adoption & clarity.
BRING VALUE
Usability testing taught us a lot.
We saw a huge opportunity to provide guidance to businesses in an accessible and viable way and take them towards their best financial decisions with increased confidence using accurate data.
Problem
Throughout research while working on the BFM Strategy revealed a crucial information: users don't lack data, they lack understanding of it. Bank transactions told them what happened, but not what it meant. Owners couldn't easily answer questions like "is my cash position healthy?" or "are my costs trending the wrong way?" without exporting data and building their own views.
How might we help businesses better understand their financial situation, considering their limited financial literacy?
Constrains & challenges
Lack of financial expertise: The current Dashboard and Analytics page were only showcasing pure numbers, leaving the interpretation of them to the businesses.
Limited user access: No direct contact with end users, a constrained budget and no dedicated research resource, I worked with 14 users in total across two research rounds, so every session had to be designed to extract maximum signal.
Lean team, fast timelines: Optimize research and prototyping phases given the timeframe defined, without compromising the quality of findings.
B2B2C complexity: The product lives inside partner banks' digital environments, thus design decisions had to work across different bank interfaces while staying within Contovista's design system.
Outcome
After several months of research, prototyping and collaboration across Product, Engineering and Data teams, we introduced Financial Key Metrics, a new capability inside Contovista's Business Finance Manager that helps micro to small businesses understand their financial situation without requiring accounting expertise.
The project validated two new product capabilities:
Cash Runway
Users see at a glance how long their cash will last, with clear thresholds (risky, recommended, stable) and the option to take action if needed, taking advantage of a list of recommendations provided.
High cash out Detection: When monthly cash out is significantly higher than the previous month (increased >20%), users get a clear, high-signal notification that links directly to the costs that caused it.
My process
User Research Interviews Round 1: Acquire knowledge
I started by mapping the financial reality of our target, micro to small businesses. I ran 1:1 sessions to map how small business owners currently track financial health: which tools they use, which metrics they monitor, and where their understanding breaks down. Goal: understand real mental models before introducing any design direction.
Secondary Research
I conducted Competitors Analysis and used external sources, including Harvard Business School studies and Federal Reserve data on small business financial literacy to pressure-test assumptions.
User Research Interviews Round 2: Metric prioritization
A second round to validate which metrics would be most meaningful and actionable, giving the users the chance to do card sorting and motivate their selection. This directly informed which candidates to take into prototyping and which to cut.
Prototype testing
I tested two directions and evaluated whether users could:
Interpret key metrics at a glance, feeling confident rather than overwhelmed
Understand terminology without explanation
Trust what they saw enough to act on it
Engage naturally with alerts and in-depth data
Feel motivated to return regularly
Cross-functional collaboration
After each round I synthesised findings into shared documents and ran structured reviews with the Product Manager and Engineers, aligning the team on priorities before moving to the next iteration. I collaborated with the Product Manager to prioritize the metrics and map them cross checking data and technical feasibility.
Conclusions
The decision that shaped the outcome
Looking back, the success of the project didn't come from individual screens. It came from a handful of product decisions that changed the experience. We stopped reporting data and started explaining it.
Instead of asking users to interpret financial metrics themselves, every insight explains what happened, why it matters and when attention is required.
Looking back
Research consistently showed that participants understood financial concepts faster, trusted the information more and felt significantly more confident making decisions. For me, the project reinforced something that continues to shape how I design products today.
People rarely need more information. They need help understanding the information they already have.
Designing Financial Key Metrics wasn't about building another dashboard, it was about designing confidence.
Design System contribution
The components used for Financial Key Metrics were added to Contovista's design system, giving the team a reusable foundation for future data-heavy features.
