Shape Behaviour, Not Just UX: Applying a Growth Lens to Product Design
Towards my final months at Jupiter (a neobank startup based in India), I was given the opportunity to work on growth initiatives within a newly formed group of talented folks from across teams. While the focus was on moving business metrics, identifying scalable levers and incentive strategies, this experience fundamentally shifted how I think about product design, especially its potential to influence behaviour. A lot of experiments we eventually shipped were deeply informed by behavioural science, e.g. how users make decisions, what draws attention, and how perceived value gets shaped.
Though my work was centred around the first 7 days of user experience, aimed at helping users reach their “aha” moments faster, these learnings have continued to guide my approach across product contexts, from feature discovery and habit loops to early retention.
Start with observation, not assumption
For growth initiatives to work, having a nuanced understanding of the customer’s stage, mindset, and motivation is crucial. That clarity can only come through observation. Before anything else, we spent time meeting new users, watching how they behaved, what they ignored, and where they paused. Pure, unfiltered observation gave us the raw inputs.
From there, we followed a simple rhythm: observations → insights → tighter hypotheses → focused experiments, prioritised using the NICE framework and a bit of gut instinct.
This framework was one of the earliest things we aligned on as a group, and it gave our efforts the direction they needed.
Think about emotions, not just the user’s goal
Product and design often focus on reducing steps and speeding up flows — automating inputs, skipping less critical steps, and so on. But we often miss thinking about what will keep user’s momentum. Do they know what they’ll get in return for the effort we’re asking of them?
Jupiter’s onboarding took about 10 minutes — reasonable for opening a bank account, but still a commitment. We observed users getting lost in the process, disconnected from why they started. There was little emotional reinforcement or sense of progress.
Our team then translated this into changes like setting clear expectations, visible progress markers, social proof, and cues reinforcing value. These small additions helped increase account creation by 1.5x
Choose what to emphasize. Then be ruthless about it
For a user who just got on a new app, it’s natural for them to explore the app on their own. Each tab on the app back then showed all the features and services available, but users were still leaving the app without doing anything. Why? When we observed such users in person, they quickly skimmed through a crowded set of features but couldn’t identify where to begin — payments, investments, financial management. A clear anchor was missing.
This was a powerful observation. We questioned “what’s the one action we want a new user to take” for each value and designed around that. Not necessarily by hiding everything else, but by creating intentional focus: a single message, a single prompt, a single reward loop to activate. (Of course, we decided what to show based on what we knew about the user who just got onboarded.)
Use visual contrast and strategic copy to signal importance
Saying that users scan UI top to bottom or left to right is an oversimplification. Anything that stands out, looks different from product’s core UI, or has motion in an otherwise mostly static page will draw eyes. This was our approach too while designing experience for our growth initiatives.
A lot of our experiments deliberately stepped outside system conventions intentionally, even though they didn’t feel ideal from a pure UX lens. A big banner that sits on top of the app’s homepage, a modal that obstructed user’s flow, or copy like “Limited time offer”, “Expires Today”, “Only for you”, all were meant to signal “this won’t be here forever” or “this deserves your attention now”.
A banner at the top of the homepage drove 60%+ CTR, outperforming the ~40% we saw when it sat at the bottom — without hurting engagement or retention. Not something I would’ve agreed to as a designer earlier.
Keep the story, from hook to completion
Imagine seeing an offer outside a shop — “Clearance sale: Flat 10% off on all items.” You walk in, but inside, no price tag mentions it, and no salesperson acknowledges it. You start to wonder: Did I misread that? Was it just bait? That break in continuity decays trust and leaves you feeling misled.
Digital products work the same way. A good campaign or growth experiment need to hook the users, and carries it through the journey thru copy and visuals. In our case, we created a payment reward experiment for one of our hypothesis on an insight. Hook on the banner “₹50 off on your first UPI payment” carried thru the entire payment journey and ended with an acknowledgment on success screen. This ensured that users were confident and invested no matter how many number of steps there were.
As we build more products and flows, it gets easier for us to imagine user journeys. But moving from 80% to 95% impact requires a deeper sensitivity to the subtle cues that influence human behaviour. This experience taught me just how powerful small shifts , a single line of copy, a well-placed visual, etc. can be in driving large-scale movement. Growth-focused design at its finest.
