Swell Investing

I fit the screening profile for an IDEO research project (early adopter of Betterment, Robinhood, Mint, Wealthfront, and a handful of other personal finance apps) and spent about two months as one of eight participants across 1:1 interviews, group sessions, and prototype testing for what turned out to be Swell Investing, an impact-investing platform backed by Pacific Life.

The process itself was well-run: baseline interviews to understand our outlook on investing, then rounds of feedback on prototypes, language, and positioning. I was candid throughout, at one point suggesting "altruistic investing" over "impact investing" as a term, which resonated in the room but didn't make it into the product.

Swell launched in 2017 with fees higher than existing robo-advisors, and shut down about two years later. I was one of only ten long-term participants, and as far as I could tell, our feedback rarely visibly changed the trajectory of the product.

I don't know what happened between IDEO's findings and Swell's decisions. That's the part participants never see. But it left me with a healthy skepticism of "validation testing" as a term: research is often used to confirm a decision that's already been made, not to inform one that hasn't.