Wise Prepay is a prepaid electricity service in New Zealand with strong value (no contract, no credit check), but it was struggling to convert and retain. The team assumed UX was the issue; GA funnel analysis showed otherwise. Many visitors thought prepaid meant expensive or a last resort — and left before understanding the offer. The real problem was trust and communication. The challenge was to reframe what Wise Prepay actually was at every key touchpoint.

I usually start every project by framing the problem through user interviews and stakeholder feedback. For Wise Prepay, the fastest way to validate the hypothesis was to follow the data first. The GA funnel confirmed significant drop-off exactly where users would encounter the value proposition — they weren't confused by the interface, they were leaving because the messaging hadn't convinced them the product was for them.

Interviews with existing and churned customers reinforced this: the brand felt cold, the tone was generic energy-company language, and there was nothing to build an emotional connection with. Critically, many users hadn't even registered the "no contract, no credit check" offer — the most compelling part of the product was buried.

With a clear problem definition, I defined the concept and translated it into detailed UI and interaction design. The approach had three pillars: simplify the message, use character-led explanations so people could understand the product intuitively, and add warm micro-interactions and clear, detailed guides to make the experience feel reassuring rather than transactional.

To rebuild trust, the brand needed a consistent, emotionally resonant story — not just better copy. I applied storytelling with AI tools to rapidly generate and test different narrative and visual directions before committing to hand-drawn production. What would normally take weeks of concept rounds was compressed into days.

The selected direction was then refined into production-quality hand-drawn vector illustrations. Previously, Wise Prepay used outsourced copywriters and an external branding agency for this kind of work. We measured cost by comparing supplier invoices for similar deliverables before and after. The overall cost came out to roughly half — approximately 50% savings.

To keep things consistent, I built and maintained a Figma component library with design tokens. As the sole designer on the team, building a robust system up front was what made it possible to move fast without creating visual debt. It also meant the marketing team could operate independently post-launch.

I validated the design with interactive prototypes in Figma — testing the core flows (onboarding, top-up, disconnection guidance) with stakeholders and a small group of existing customers before engineering handoff. I then worked side-by-side with the dev team until final launch, running QA against component specs and flagging any drift from design intent.

The redesign addressed the core trust problem and delivered measurable results. Top-up completion increased and support tickets decreased — both signals that users now understood the product and felt confident using it independently. The AI-assisted workflow also delivered lasting operational value: the marketing team can now create and publish on-brand content without relying on external agencies or designer involvement for every update.