Turning intention into habit

AutoInvest is Stake’s automated investment feature — allowing users to set up a recurring monthly plan that allocates funds across Dubai properties based on a chosen theme: Growth, Income, Diversified, or Custom. I owned the end-to-end product design, from early flow mapping through to the shipped in-app experience, and separately designed and built the AutoInvest marketing page in Framer within a week of launch.

Problem

Stake’s core proposition is fractional real estate investing — but the experience was entirely manual. Users had to log in, browse available properties, and actively decide where to allocate funds each month. For many investors, this friction worked against their own goals: they wanted exposure to real estate returns, but inconsistent engagement meant inconsistent investing.

There were two compounding issues:

1. Behavioural drop-off. Users who intended to invest regularly often didn’t — not from lack of intent, but from inertia. Life gets busy.

2. Decision fatigue. With a growing property catalogue, choosing where to put money each month was overwhelming for newer or less confident investors.

The opportunity was to remove both barriers with a single, well-designed automation layer.

Design Decisions

1. Theme-first setup, not amount-first

Early explorations led with the investment amount as the primary input. In practice, this felt transactional and put users in a financial headspace before they’d committed to a direction.

We shifted to a theme-first model — Growth, Income, Diversified, Custom — so users anchor on their goal first. The amount input follows naturally once intent is clear. This reduced cognitive load at the most critical moment in the setup flow.

2. Summarised confirmation before commitment

Before a user activates their plan, the final screen surfaces a clear summary: chosen theme, monthly amount, next deposit date, and a plain-language explanation of how allocations work. Nothing is buried. This was deliberate — AutoInvest is a recurring financial commitment, and trust requires transparency at the point of action.

3. Persistent status visibility

Once active, the AutoInvest card in the portfolio view shows the next scheduled deposit date and current status at a glance. Users don’t need to dig into settings to know their plan is running. This was a small decision that had a meaningful impact on confidence — the product feels like it’s working for you.

4. Minimal, recoverable setup

The setup flow was kept to three steps. Editing or pausing a plan is as accessible as creating one — no hidden menus. Reducing the perceived irreversibility of the commitment lowered activation anxiety.

Marketing Page

In parallel with the in-app work, I designed and built the AutoInvest landing page using Framer — delivered within one week of the feature launch. The page needed to explain an unfamiliar concept (automated real estate investing) quickly and credibly to new and existing users.

Key decisions on the page:

• Lead with the motion. A short product video runs above the fold to demonstrate the feature before any copy needs to explain it.

• Three value pillars, kept tight. “Set it and forget it”, “No more guesswork”, “Diversify on autopilot” — each maps directly to a user concern rather than a feature description.

• Social proof through property imagery. Real property cards (Dubai Hills, Business Bay, Marina) ground the automation in tangible, recognisable assets — reinforcing that this is real estate, not an abstract fund.

→ Read the full AutoInvest guide

→ View the live marketing page