X-StudioCase StudyX-Studio × Vela · 2025
Vela brings everyday banking and long-term investing into a single mobile experience, designed so nobody has to become a financial expert to feel in control of their money.
What we did
Fictional concept. Vela is an EU-focused banking and investment product created as a portfolio piece for X-Studio. Product details, research findings and performance figures are illustrative, not client results.
01 · The project
European consumers have more ways than ever to save and invest, but the experience is fragmented. One app for everyday banking. Another for investments. Another for savings. A dozen screens explaining fees, risk and market movements.
Vela brings banking and investing into one calm, understandable experience. The ambition was simple: make investing feel like part of your financial life, not a separate financial task.
X-Studio defined the product experience from the ground up: product strategy, UX, interface design, brand, prototyping and front-end thinking as one system rather than six handoffs.
02 · The brief
Vela had to serve two very different moments: “I just want to know how much money I have,” and “I want to understand where my money is going.” The challenge was never adding features. It was deciding what deserved attention, when it deserved it, and what could disappear into the background.
03 · The opportunity
Most banking products optimise for information density. We wanted Vela to optimise for financial confidence. So instead of accounts, transactions, charts and market data as separate destinations, we designed the experience around three questions. Those three questions became the information architecture.
Your complete financial picture, in one place, before you have to act on any of it.
Spending, saving and investing behaviour, shown as behaviour rather than as rows.
Goals and long-term progress, visible enough to keep people moving toward them.
04 · The home screen
The home experience isn't a traditional banking dashboard. It answers the questions people actually have when they open a banking app, then gives them context before asking them to act.
Balances are quiet. Important actions are obvious. Investment performance is contextual. Charts answer a question rather than showing off the data behind them.
Total balance
Available
Invested
Savings
If everything looks important, nothing is important.
05 · Investing, without the intimidation
07 · How we worked
Design and engineering stayed in the same room for the whole project, which is the only reason the system below survived contact with production.
Product principles, personas, core journeys, information architecture, interaction patterns and the visual language.
High-fidelity flows, prototypes, motion, accessibility, responsive behaviour, engineering specs and the edge cases nobody scopes.
Component library, interaction guidelines, design tokens, documentation and a handover the team can build the next feature on.
08 · The design system
09 · Concept metrics
These figures are illustrative concept results from prototype testing of a fictional product. They are not client outcomes and should not be quoted as such.
10 · What X-Studio brought
Research, flows, UX and interface design.
A native-first experience designed for iOS and Android.
A visual identity that works across product, web and comms.
A scalable foundation for everything shipped after us.
High-fidelity prototypes to test the experience before production.
The layer that makes a product feel responsive and alive.
11 · The takeaway
People shouldn't have to become financial experts to feel in control of their money. By bringing banking, saving, investing and planning into one coherent experience, Vela ends up clear enough for everyday use and deep enough for serious decisions.
