Unlocked Working Capital
Turned real-time POS and accounting telemetry into credible credit lines, unlocking \$50,000+ loans for excluded SMBs.
90-Day 0-to-1 Sprint
Compressed a raw machine-learning thesis into production-ready cross-platform mobile and web applications in roughly three months.
Stops Predatory Debt
Transparent health levers steered cash-strapped founders away from toxic Merchant Cash Advances carrying 40%+ interest rates.
Investor-Grade Credibility
Delivered institutional-grade UX that gave the founding team immediate validation in venture pitch rooms, unlocking capital raise.
Business Health Dashboard across mobile iOS and responsive desktop: explainable metrics and prescriptive capital levers.
Why traditional commercial credit bureaus quietly shut out healthy SMBs.
The Market Reality
Traditional commercial bureaus (Dun & Bradstreet, Experian) evaluate businesses using 3 years of audited tax returns that fast-moving, modern SMBs simply do not have in clean corporate form.
The Information Gap
A business with \$80,000 in monthly recurring revenue could be rejected for a modest equipment lease because their FICO score was an opaque black box with zero explanation or path to improve.
The Predatory Trap
Locked out of traditional banking, cash-strapped operators routinely turn to predatory Merchant Cash Advances (MCAs) with effective APRs topping 40–80%, trapping viable businesses in spiral debt.
Translate proprietary ML risk models into an intuitive cross-platform experience.
Till's thesis was that machine learning could generate a more accurate underwriting signal from live operational telemetry (bank feeds, POS receipts, accounting software). My charter as Lead UX Architect was to turn that algorithmic model into a production-ready system in 90 days:
1. Explainable AI Architecture
Deconstruct statistical risk models into human-comprehensible financial pillars, giving founders transparent visibility into their score and actionable steps to raise it.
2. Production Cross-Platform Build
Design mobile iOS and responsive web simultaneously, stress-testing and expanding the design system so engineering could build with zero interface ambiguity.
Four velocity phases from blank slate to investor validation.
Early-stage fintechs cannot afford throwaway mockups. We structured rapid collaborative sprints to deliver production artifacts that directly briefed engineering.
Scope Distillation: Translating complex lending algorithms into core product requirements
Conducted rapid stakeholder workshops to evaluate underwriting constraints and rank day-one feature scope. Established a clear separation between foundational banking connections and post-funding features, protecting delivery dates before drawing a single screen.
Responsive Synthesis: Designing mobile-first operational views alongside desktop analysis
Iterated wireframes for mobile iOS and desktop web in parallel. Business owners monitor daily cash flow on phones during shop hours, but analyze credit terms on desktop at night. Resolving cross-platform hierarchies in wireframes saved weeks of downstream rework.
Complete Journey Architecture: Eliminating state ambiguity across onboarding & banking link
Mapped every screen, error branch, and state transition—including Plaid account linking, asynchronous underwriting calculation, and capital disbursement offers—into an exhaustive system flow that served as the definitive build blueprint for engineering.
Design System Adoption & Contribution: Stress-testing tokens and authoring financial widgets
Rather than designing disconnected one-off screens, I utilized and expanded the shared multi-platform design library. Authored custom gauge dials, trend sparklines, and liquidity status badges, stress-testing them against extreme financial edge cases before contributing them back to the repository.
A buildable, investor-validated platform that catalyzed venture backing.
Till exited the 90-day engagement with an interactive mobile and web experience, verified user journeys, and a robust design system foundation. The artifacts provided the founding team with undeniable investor credibility and gave incoming engineering squads an unambiguous build specification.
Platforms Unified
iOS and web designed in parallel
0-to-1 Sprint Velocity
From concept to production handoff
System Adoption
Shared design library enriched
// Fintech Architecture Retrospective
For early-stage startups, systems beat individual screens every single time.
The durable value of a rapid product design sprint isn't high-fidelity comps—it's whether the founding team has the underlying system to keep building autonomously. By establishing an explainable mental model for credit drivers and contributing reusable component patterns back to the design library, we gave Till a battle-tested foundation that accelerated engineering long after our engagement concluded.