Helping Singaporeans plan for life, on their own terms
PLAN WITH CPF
Jan 2025 - present
I led design for PLAN with CPF, bringing 8 planning tools into one place and making them make sense to people needed them. It also set the UX playbook for future hub-and-module products.
8
planning tools unified
80%
CSAT
1:15
designer to product team
Company
Central Provident Fund Board
Role
Sole product designer
Contribution
Product strategy, research, UX design, prototyping, facilitation
Team
1 product designer, 10 product owners, 5 developers
The problem
CPF had the planning tools. Members had no way in.
CPF already offers a range of financial planning tools. But they sit on different pages, each with their own entry points, and most assume some knowledge of policy and jargon. Someone wondering "will I be okay in retirement?" first has to work out which tool to use and what the terms mean. Many want to plan, but are intimidated and give up before they start.
The concept
Organise planning around life goals, and not tools
Instead of organising planning by tool, we focused on life areas which call on financial planning: retirement income, home ownership, health insurance, legacy planning, and growing liquidity. This meant funnelling 8 existing planning tools under these life areas, which went on to become PLAN with CPF (PLAN).
PLAN's experience follows a loop: see where you stand, see the gap to your goal, take guided action, then recalibrate as life changes. Goals change, planning shouldn't be one-off.
The vision
Before designing screens, I got 16 people to agree on what a citizen would value decades from now
A workshop with the wider team asked what a citizen would value decades from now, and why. Five benefits came out of it:
They became the lens for every feature after: which benefit does this serve, and for whom?
Facilitating the workshop with 16 participants across PLAN and its sister team
Decision #1
Members felt graded by our checklist, so we let them decide what matters
Early dashboard explorations used a checklist with a "100% complete" state, on the assumption that a sense of progress would make the product engaging, and engagement would make it useful.
Some of the team's initial explorations for the dashboard, using a "100% complete" state
Usability testing showed the opposite. Members have different financial priorities, so an incomplete checklist felt like being marked down for skipping things that weren't relevant to them.
You are rating me when I didn't ask for it, what gives you the right?
We replaced completeness with five planning areas, each showing whether there’s something worth acting on. This went live as part of PLAN’s first go-to-market milestone.
The implemented design presents the five planning areas, allowing citizens to decide how to act without enforcing completion.
Explorations for the individual status indicators — this was fun!
Decision #2
We split the flow to fix drop-off, but the Hub is what made the numbers make sense
The Retirement Payout Planner used a straight-through flow that forced members to complete their planning in one sitting. Data showed a significant drop-off rate, suggesting that its design didn't quite match how members use it — they were either giving up midway, or getting what they needed and leaving.
Indicative user funnel of the Retirement Payout Planner. Most members did not get to task #3.
The thinking was that a central hub and module concept would address this: plan in smaller tasks, or go straight to what you came for. So the flow was reworked into standalone modules, with calculations that correlated with one another.
In research interviews with citizens, back-to-back calculations with overlapping inputs left people disoriented, especially those unfamiliar with CPF policy. But when sessions ended back at the Hub, almost all had a moment of clarity:
I didn't know what was going on. But this page is the most useful, at one glance I know already. This is the saving grace, I feel happier now.
The Hub, it turned out, was what grounded people. So members are now directed back to it at the end of every module, where they can make sense of what they just calculated and decide for themselves what to do next.
My recommended design for the Hub. The launched version differs in copy and some details, following refinements during implementation.
Observing a participant as she interacted with the prototype during usability testing. (Photo taken and used with permission, masked for privacy.)
Outcome
We reached a wider audience, and it was one that came back
PLAN launched in July 2025, the first time CPF’s planning services appeared together as one suite. Since then, unique users across the planning tools have grown significantly, reaching members who hadn’t used these services before. A high returning rate and 80% CSAT suggest they found it worth coming back to.
Beyond the product itself, the research clarified how members want to engage with CPF on financial planning, and set UX guidelines that future hub-and-module products can build on.
The Straits Times: CPF members can make housing, retirement and health insurance plans with new digital platform
How I worked
As the only designer, I kept members in the room for every decision
I was the only designer, split between an existing squad and this new product team. To stay focused on the core member experience, I coached the team on weighing simpler UX trade-offs themselves. I also kept research findings and the shared vision in front of every conversation, so member needs stayed at the forefront.
Takeaways
What I'd carry into the next product
Test the premise, not just the design. Engagement and usefulness are different things.
Context makes numbers useful. More calculations won't help if people don't know why they matter.
Always ask why. Anyone can produce screens, even AI. Craft is knowing what belongs on them.