Retirement security is a growing crisis in America: 1 in 3 Americans has no retirement savings, and 76% of baby boomers aren't confident they've saved enough. Plan sponsors were taking notice — increasingly requiring effective retirement income tools as a condition of new and renewal contracts.
At T. Rowe Price, internal data told a similar story — users logged in regularly to check their balance, but most had no clear picture of whether they were on track or what steps could meaningfully improve their retirement readiness. The gap wasn't just financial. It was informational. The question became: how could the 401(k) experience move beyond a balance statement and help people retire with confidence and sufficient income?
As the principal designer on this journey, I led the end-to-end interaction design for the retirement income tool — defining user flows, balance scenarios, savings pathways, and model interactivity from research to final execution. Working within a team of three designers and a content strategist, I applied behavioral nudge principles and A/B testing to shape an experience that was both data-rich and deeply human. Throughout, I collaborated closely with the journey lead, product managers, engineers, and subject matter experts to ensure the design vision translated seamlessly from concept to launch.
For many plan participants, retirement savings felt abstract — and dangerously so. Retirement planning rarely comes with a roadmap, and for most users, the uncertainty wasn't from a lack of care — it was a lack of context. Without knowing how long their savings would need to last, most had no frame of reference for what "enough" actually meant — a balance of $200,000 might feel like a milestone, but falls critically short of funding a retirement spanning 20 to 30 years.
And for those who sensed the gap, the path forward still wasn't clear — many couldn't afford to contribute more even if they wanted to. The real opportunity was awareness — the catalyst that could meet every user where they were and give everyone a path forward, however different that path might look.
Reframe the homepage from a balance view into a future-focused planning tool. Using T. Rowe Price's Morningstar projection engine and retirement savings gap visualization, the new experience tells users' retirement readiness story — and empowers them to alter its trajectory through actions and nudges.
The design challenge was to help users quickly understand the relationship between age, current balance, and contribution rate — and whether they were on track to produce sufficient retirement income — while understanding the consequences of their current strategy and surfacing actions to improve it.
If investors can immediately see how their current savings trajectory compares to a recommended benchmark, they will recognize gaps sooner and be more motivated to adjust their contribution strategy.
When shown a visual comparison between their current savings trajectory and a recommended benchmark, users immediately recognized the gap and expressed stronger motivation to increase contributions and explore ways to close it.
But research revealed something deeper: most users didn't just lack visibility into their gap — they had no frame of reference for what it meant for their future. Seeing a shortfall in dollars wasn't enough. What moved them was understanding the consequence — that without change, their savings would run out. This shifted the design direction from "here is your gap" to "here is your future" — expanding the visualization to trace both accumulation and decumulation, so users could see not just the gap, but exactly when and how their money would run out.
Many visual approaches effectively communicate the savings gap, but fall short of telling a full retirement readiness story — leaving users without a clear picture of when savings may run out or how their trajectory might change. Building on what research revealed, the design traces the full arc of users' saving years, retirement years, and the growth, accumulation, and decumulation of their savings.
The redesigned homepage delivers clear, personalized guidance — helping users understand their retirement outlook and the actions available to improve it. By surfacing the savings gap directly on the homepage, the experience makes the consequences of current savings behaviors immediately visible, encouraging earlier and more informed adjustments.
A clear visual breakdown reinforces the dual sources of value users receive: employer contributions from plan sponsors and the returns their investments generated over time — a quiet reward for staying the course with T. Rowe Price.
The homepage model empowers users to move a slider along the accumulation slope — instantly seeing how projected balance and contribution needs shift at different points in their retirement journey, giving them a tangible starting point before exploring deeper customization in the retirement income tool.
T. Rowe Price serves over 1.9 million retirement plan participants — yet 84% never navigate beyond the homepage, 94% identify as beginners in financial knowledge, 92% have less than $28,000 saved, and 32%
are missing out on their employer match. These numbers make one thing clear: the homepage isn't just an entry point — it's the most powerful touchpoint in the entire experience.
By bringing the retirement income model directly to the homepage, the experience reaches all ~1.9 million users the moment they log in — ensuring that even the 84% who never navigate further are made aware of their financial readiness and given clear opportunities to improve their retirement outlook.
Within two months of release, the results spoke for themselves: the homepage achieved an engagement rate of over 20% and earned the Retirement Plan Monitor Awards Gold Medal for Homepage and Account Data.
Retirement readiness is one of the most data-rich — and emotionally loaded — challenges in financial UX. The final homepage carries an extraordinary number of data points, and one of the greatest design challenges was presenting them in a way that felt cohesive, elegant, and effortless to the user. A picture speaks a thousand words, and in this case, that picture had to tell a deeply personal financial story at a glance — without overwhelming the very users who needed it most.
This project reinforced the strategic power of design to do more than organize information — it can change behavior, shift perspective, and move people to act in their own best interest. At a scale of 1.9 million users, even small moments of clarity can have an outsized impact on people's lives and futures.
And at its core, that's what made this work meaningful. Designing for users who are uncertain, underserved, and often overlooked — and giving them a clearer path forward — is a reminder of why human-centered design matters beyond the screen.
