Microfinance and Mobile Banking App
UI/UX Redesign for VisionFund

VisionFund is a global microfinance agency. Their mission is powerful: to break poverty cycles. They do this with microloans. Savings programs. Climate-risk insurance programs. And more. Their work spans over 20 countries. It empowers thousands of vulnerable communities, families, and individuals, primarily women in low-income communities.

Their mission is to build financial resilience against disaster and inequality.

But their digital tools in two critical markets – Tanzania and Myanmar- were failing. The loan features in this app were disconnected from the savings features. Critical insurance features were buried under complex menus. Using the app was very difficult, especially for rural users.

VisionFund asked our studio to completely redesign their mobile app. This new app had to be a single, unified financial platform that would deliver easy access to all of VisionFund’s powerful features. This access had to be custom-designed for their target users in Tanzania and Myanmar.

Our key objectives were to:

• Consolidate All Critical Services: Account management. Fund transfers. Loan applications. Savings. The app had to seamlessly consolidate all of these features into an easy-to-use platform and make them single-tap accessible. No more toggling between separate, confusing platforms.
• Design for Zero Digital Literacy: The design had to be simple enough for users with limited digital literacy. It also had to be lightweight enough to work flawlessly on entry-level smartphones in low-bandwidth areas. Icon-led navigation. Simple, 2-4 step workflows. Voice-guided assistance. We had to prioritize features like these.
• Frictionless Experience: The new app needed to reduce confusion through clear navigation. Simple enrolment flows. Integrated support to build trust. The app needed these design features to reflect VisionFund’s brand properly.

The goal was not just to design a functional app. It was to create a motivational partner that reflected VisionFund’s hopeful, empowering brand identity in every interaction. Every transaction in the app had to feel like a moment of dignity and encouragement, not intimidation.

Designing a far superior app for survival and resilience in some of the world’s toughest environments was not going to be easy. The existing mobile apps tried and did worse than fail. They were actively hindering VisionFund’s mission. They were a source of friction and frustration for users who needed reliability and simplicity most. During the redesign, we had to deal with:

• Fragmented Financial Pathways: The old app was a maze. A simple loan application required over seven steps. Savings tracking lived in a separate, forgotten module. All of these design fragmentations created big barriers for users, especially those new to digital banking.
• Severe Digital Exclusion Barriers: This was not a typical target user base. In the target regions of Myanmar, many users were first-time smartphone owners. In Tanzania, a majority of women preferred voice instructions over text. The old app UI was not optimized for true accessibility. It lacked proper language support and was too heavy for the low-bandwidth networks and entry-level smartphones common in the communities VisionFund serves. This limited the app’s adoption.
• Extreme Infrastructure Limitations: We were designing for the real world. That meant intermittent cell coverage, often for only a few hours a day. It meant entry-level devices with minimal RAM. The existing app frequently crashed during the monsoon season, the exact moment when VisionFund’s financial tools were most needed.

The previous app was a sterile, transactional tool. It was barely functional. But, even worse, it lacked spirit. It failed to capture the hopeful, empowering essence of the VisionFund brand. Our design had to simultaneously address all of these issues.