Challenge

Paceline, a fintech startup, sought to revolutionize wellness by integrating physical activity with financial rewards. The challenge was to seamlessly incorporate a new credit card product into their existing app, enhancing user engagement without disrupting the established health and rewards ecosystem.

Solution

As Senior Design Director at Hero Digital, I led the redesign of the Paceline app to integrate the credit card feature. This involved:

Defining the experience vision. Paceline's core promise — earn financial rewards through physical activity — had to remain intact as we introduced a fundamentally new product surface. I established the strategic framework that positioned the credit card not as an add-on, but as a natural extension of the reward loop users already trusted. This meant aligning the product, business, and design teams around a single north star: the card should feel like it was always part of Paceline.

Designing for dual context. The interaction design challenge was bridging two distinct user mindsets — the fitness-motivated user tracking their weekly activity, and the financially-motivated user managing a credit card. I led the UI design work to create a unified experience layer where both contexts coexisted without friction, using progressive disclosure to surface card features at moments of natural reward recognition rather than interrupting the wellness flow.