Vanguard Retirement Nudges Design & Research

Vanguard research teams found success by defaulting participants into a plan that auto-increases their annual contribution rates. Further research was done to see how "nudges" could be a persuasive method to positively impact behavior change.

The highly-influential book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness popularized this research and impacted other aspects of public policy.

Inspired by these results, user interface elements were designed to persuade participants to take action on their retirement plans. 

Part of my work included supporting the UI design, front-end development, and design research to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of these designs. These designs were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal - View PDF full article