A wealth app for people who had never felt welcome in one.
Essor is a mobile investing and crypto portfolio for a wealth manager in Paris, designed at 7 Seers Media over ten weeks. Most of the work was deciding what to leave out, and turning the slowest part of the product, which is getting verified, into the part that earns trust.
Role
Product design lead, 7 Seers Media
Timeline
2026, ten weeks
Team
A Paris wealth manager and the 7 Seers design team, run by me
Live
iOS, dark and light
01
The problem
Lafont Patrimoine, a wealth manager in Paris, wanted a mobile product for a generation that had started investing without them. France had just had its sharpest return to retail investing in years, and the people driving it were younger and more sceptical than the people the firm already looked after.
The brief was a wealth app. The real problem, when I looked closely, was that finance apps shout. They have dense dashboards and red and green everywhere, and they treat verification as paperwork rather than as the moment someone decides whether to trust you with their money.
02
What I did
I started with the market rather than the screens
I ran it end to end over ten weeks, and I began with the market, because the argument for the product had to come first. The numbers made the case on their own. In 2025 share trading activity in France grew twenty one per cent, 1.9 million people bought or sold shares, 780,000 traded for the first time, and the average investor age fell from fifty one to forty eight.
I wrote the rules down so they could be argued with
From there I set the rules the design would be judged against and put them in writing, rather than leaving them to be guessed at. There are twelve colours, and only two of them are allowed to raise their voice. I chose a serif in a category of grotesques, Fraunces over Inter, so the product reads as considered rather than loud. The thirty four icons were drawn rather than downloaded, because a borrowed icon set is where a product stops looking like itself.
We were asked to design a wealth app for people who had never felt welcome in one.
03
How I ran it
It ran for ten weeks, with the Paris side reviewing at the end of each one. I kept the decisions in writing: what the product wouldn't do, which assets it would carry at launch, and what moved to a later release. That way each review was about the decision in front of us rather than about what anyone remembered agreeing.
The part that took longest is the part most teams rush. Getting verified takes seventeen screens, and I treated every one as a place the product could lose someone rather than a form to get through. A returning user then sees exactly one screen, a phone number and a one time code, and lands on the portfolio. Everything we learned across those seventeen screens went into making sure a returning user never sees sixteen of them again.
04
The journey
The journey starts before anyone sees a portfolio. Someone arrives from a bank that already holds their money, or from a crypto app that holds it badly, and the first thing Essor asks them to do is prove who they are.
That's seventeen screens: a phone number, a one time code, personal details, address, tax residency, a document and a selfie against it. I treated each one as somewhere the product could lose them rather than a form to get through, so every screen says what it needs, why it needs it, and how far along they are.
Once they're in, the shape changes. A returning user sees a single screen, a number and a code, and lands on the portfolio. From there the product is three things: the portfolio read by day, week, month, year and all time, the markets to discover and research what to buy, and the activity behind every move they've made.
05
What shipped
It shipped as an iOS product in dark and light, with a portfolio that reads by day, week, month, year and all time, buying, selling and holding crypto and other assets in a few taps, curated research and investment pools, and price alerts for people who would rather not watch the market all day.
It was handed over as a system rather than a set of screens, so the in-house team could build from it without coming back for a decision.
06
Impact
From the market read to handover
10 weeks
Screens to a verified account
17
Icons drawn, not downloaded
34
Colours, and only two raise their voice
12
07
The work
Essor, as it was handed over
08
Go deeper
Design system and Figma
There are twelve colours, with accent plum and info teal as the only two that carry weight. Fraunces sets the display over Inter for the interface. Thirty four icons were drawn for the product. The components, their states, and the dark and light sets all went over together.
Build and handover
The handover was built to be used rather than admired. It carries every component with its states, the icon set as a library, and the rules written next to the screens, so a developer could see why something looked the way it did without asking.
More
All work
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