How Alien Design Simplified Digital Investing for Aditya Birla Capital Digital

Investing apps have a trust problem before they have a usability problem. A confusing flow doesn't just frustrate a user, it makes them question whether their money is safe. That tension sits at the center of most fintech product design: how do you simplify a genuinely complex decision without making users feel like something important is being hidden from them?

It's the problem Aditya Birla Capital Digital (ABCD) set out to solve with Simplinvest, a new investing feature built into its app that lets users invest across mutual funds, ETFs, and other instruments through a single, goal-driven flow. ABCD partnered with Alien Design to shape the experience. The feature launched publicly at Global Fintech Fest 2025, drawing coverage from outlets including The Economic Times and ANI News.
https://www.thealien.design/product-design-agency

Alien Design is a product design and Webflow development agency headquartered in Chennai, India, with a presence extending to Canada. Founded in 2020, the agency has built UI/UX, product experiences, and websites for startups and enterprises across fintech, banking, healthcare, e-commerce, edtech, and enterprise software, working with companies including HDFC, Aditya Birla, TVS, Cavin Kare, IIFL, Stockal, Synergy, and ZIFO, with recognition from Awards, CSS Winner, and FWA. Its approach to fintech work in particular leans on designing for trust rather than just aesthetics, which is exactly what shaped the Simplinvest collaboration.
https://www.thealien.design/projects

A Partnership Built on Research, Not Assumptions-

A common mistake in fintech product design is treating UX as a late-stage polish step. ABCD avoided that. By the time Alien Design got involved, ABCD's product and research teams had already done substantial groundwork, mapping user behavior, identifying flow friction points, and understanding the mental models people bring to investing decisions.

That gave the design team a real foundation to build on instead of starting from scratch. The work shifted from deciding what the interface should look like to translating what was already known about users into screens that didn't get in their way. It's a useful reminder for any team building financial products: the strongest UX work rarely begins with wireframes. It begins with whatever research already exists in the organization, however informal.
https://www.thealien.design/insights/alien-design-simplinvest-abcd

Designing for Confidence-

Simplinvest had to offer multiple investment options without turning that choice into a wall of decisions. The core design challenge was information hierarchy, deciding what a user needs to see first, what can wait, and what should be simplified entirely.

A few principles guided the approach. Iterative wireframes sequenced choices so users moved toward clarity rather than being shown everything at once. Microinteractions, including contextual tooltips, progress indicators, and subtle transitions, gave users a sense of control at each step, which matters more in financial products than in almost any other category. And rather than introducing an entirely new look, the team evolved ABCD's existing brand identity with calmer tones, aiming for an interface that felt approachable rather than purely transactional.

That combination reflects a broader pattern worth noting for regulated or high-stakes products: the goal isn't to make the interface feel exciting. It's to make it feel safe enough that users keep going instead of abandoning the flow halfway through.

Where Usability Meets Compliance-

One of the harder parts of investment app design is that usability and compliance aren't always aligned. A simpler flow can sometimes conflict with disclosure or regulatory requirements. Rather than treating that as a tradeoff to win or lose, the ABCD and Alien teams worked through complex flows and edge cases together, with daily collaboration between designers and product stakeholders instead of periodic handoffs.

That operating model is worth highlighting on its own. Design decisions in fintech rarely live in isolation; they touch legal, compliance, and product strategy simultaneously. Treating design as part of that conversation from the start, rather than a downstream deliverable, is often what separates a feature that ships smoothly from one that gets stuck in review cycles.

What the Collaboration Shows-

The Simplinvest project offers a few practical takeaways for founders, product managers, and design leads working on fintech or other high-trust digital products. Use existing research before commissioning new research; if user and market research already exists, the design team's job is translation, not duplication. Treat information hierarchy as the primary UX problem, especially in products with multiple options or outcomes, since sequence often matters as much as visual design. Build trust through small interactions rather than big visual choices alone, since tooltips and progress indicators often do more for user confidence than a redesigned homepage. And involve design in compliance conversations early, so usability and regulatory requirements get resolved together instead of in opposition.

Digital investing products will keep getting more feature-rich as platforms add instruments, goals, and automation. The ones that win users' trust won't necessarily be the ones with the most features; they'll be the ones where every added feature still feels simple to use. That's the standard Simplinvest was designed against, and it's a useful bar for any team building in fintech UX today.
https://www.thealien.design/contact

Awfis Sierra, 1st Floor, Electrical,
Electronics & Instruments industries
Perungudi, OMR, Chennai - 600096

Alien describes itself as a digital design firm and expert in Webflow services that specializes in creating engaging brands that brings together business strategy, design creativity, and technology. The firm is located in Chennai, India. Its services are divided into three broad categories:

(i) Design: User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design, mobile app designing, concept creation, competitive analysis, design systems, prototyping, animations and illustrations.
(ii) Branding: brand strategy, identity shaping, visual branding and packaging, creation of printed materials etc.
(iii) Development: Webflow services, front-end development, back-end development, CMS and API development, and mobile app development.

This release was published on openPR.