Case Study 03
Designing a savings account for the next generation.
Trump Accounts · 2025 to 2026
I co-led design and facilitated a fast-paced sprint to define how families would open, fund, and manage Trump Accounts on the JPMorgan platform. Working alongside leadership across product, design, and tech, we produced an end-to-end vision that was pitched to the U.S. Treasury. The designs set the foundation for what is now in build and slated to ship Q4 2026.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created Trump Accounts: a tax-advantaged investment account for every American child, with a $1,000 Treasury seed for eligible kids born 2025 to 2028. Treasury set the rules, but the experience for the parents who'd actually open and manage these accounts didn't exist yet. Every brokerage was racing to define it, and JPMorgan needed a vision in days, not quarters.
With a two-week window, I facilitated daily working sessions across product, design, tech, marketing, and compliance. The structure was deliberate: map what was unknown, what was legally required, and what was open to design.
Compliance flagged the IRS rules early. Marketing held the line on the parent's mental model. Product framed the build constraints. Decisions were made in the room, captured on the wall, and carried into the next session, so we never lost a day to async alignment.
Alignment moves at the speed of the artifact you put in front of people. I used an in-house LLM to generate working HTML prototypes directly from the concepts coming out of our sessions, iterating live with leadership instead of asking them to imagine a wireframe.
The unlock was twofold: non-designers in compliance and marketing could react to real screens instead of abstract descriptions, and weeks of Figma work compressed into hours, so meetings were spent deciding, not waiting.
Instead of debating in the abstract, I built four working prototypes of the dashboard, each making a different bet on how to communicate balance, contributors, and growth. Leadership reviewed them side by side and converged on Concept C as the foundation.
We knew the majority of clients coming to this product would be unfamiliar with investing. That shaped everything. Before a single screen was drawn, we aligned on four things the experience had to get right.
Most clients arriving at this product had heard of Trump Accounts but didn't understand them. Eligibility rules, the $1,000 seed, contribution caps, and IRA-style mechanics all needed to be translated into language a busy parent could parse on a phone. Educational moments were embedded throughout the flow, not isolated to a help section, so clients could learn in context without breaking stride.
For a product this new, clients would have questions we couldn't anticipate in static copy. An AI-powered chat experience lets clients ask anything: how the $1,000 seed works, whether their employer can contribute, what happens when their child turns 18, or how this compares to a 529. The goal was to give every client a knowledgeable guide, on demand, without picking up the phone.
Trump Accounts are unique in that contributions can come from multiple sources: the client themselves, an employer, the U.S. Treasury, or a charitable organization. The dashboard makes this transparent by default, showing a clear breakdown by contributor alongside projected growth at age 18. Clients should always be able to answer the question: how much is mine, and where did the rest come from?
Trump Accounts restrict investments to low-cost U.S. index funds, but within that, clients have real choices to make. The experience surfaces those choices clearly: what they're invested in, how it's allocated, and how to adjust it. For clients new to investing, this is often the first time they've actively managed a portfolio. The design treats that as an opportunity, giving them the language and tools to feel in control without feeling overwhelmed.
From the first eligibility check to managing an investment strategy, all in one place. Every step designed for a client who is new to investing and new to this product.
A two-week sprint produced the vision that became the reference for production. The work moved three orgs onto a single plan and gave JPMorgan a head start in a market where every brokerage was starting from zero.
The sprint output became the reference for the production build, with the core pillars carried forward intact.
Facilitating across product, design, and tech compressed what could have been quarters of alignment into days.
In build for launch alongside the federal program rollout. The work set the foundation for what the finished product will become.
