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AI is transforming finance. Design makes it human.
Beacon AI shows how Grand Studio helps organizations prototype intelligent, human-centered experiences—fast, responsibly, and with impact.
Let’s build what’s next together.
Project highlights
Hyper-personalized financial intelligence
Explored how adaptive AI could learn from individual financial behaviors to imagine a future where guidance feels tailor-made for every user.
Reinventing the personal financial experience
Envisioned a simpler, smarter way for people to interact with their money—where machine learning turns complex data into clear, confident decisions.
Designing trust into an AI system
Defined principles for building transparency and empathy into financial technology, proving that intelligence can feel intuitive, not intrusive.
From data to daily action
Prototyped interactive, motivational flows that showcase how AI might help users set goals, stay on track, and celebrate real progress.
A living AI design system
Created a forward-looking design framework that is scalable, ethical, and ready to evolve with future generations of AI tools.
Reimagining the relationship between people and their money
Managing money has become an emotionally taxing chore for most people. Between budgets, bills, and financial goals, what should feel empowering often feels exhausting. Despite a wave of digital tools, most still treat personal finance as a numbers game, not a human experience.
Beacon AI was created as a proof of concept to explore how artificial intelligence could change that dynamic. By translating data into clear, human insights, Beacon reimagines what financial guidance can look like when it listens, learns, and responds like a trusted advisor.
Beacon AI is more than a prototype, it’s a vision for the future of personal finance.
Beacon represents the promise of deeply personalized, emotionally intelligent finance, where every interaction feels made for you. It’s a glimpse of a future that’s still unfolding—one we’re already beginning to shape.
Rethinking the future of PFM
As the Grand Studio team surveyed the landscape of personal finance tools, we found an industry stuck in the past. Despite the hype around AI, most products still relied on the same decade-old interactions: static budgets, surface-level automation, and chatbots that did little to inspire confidence or change behavior.
Consumers expected more. Financial institutions wanted to innovate but often hesitated under the weight of regulation and risk. No one had yet made a meaningful leap forward—one that would make financial guidance feel personal, intuitive, and genuinely useful.
Key questions:
- How might we make personal finance feel adaptive and intuitive; less like tracking, more like guidance?
- How might AI help people not just understand their finances, but feel confident acting on them throughout their journey?
- How might design and intelligence work together to build trust in something new?
Our challenge was to imagine a smarter, more human financial experience—one that used AI not for novelty, but for genuine empowerment in decision-making. Starting from a blank slate, we set out to prove what can be possible when design strategy meets intelligent technology.
Fast, focused, and built for learning
Beacon was intentionally designed as a rapid exploration: a sprint to imagine what responsible, human-centered AI in personal financial management could look like. We knew speed would be critical, not just to move quickly, but to learn quickly.
Through one week of focused research and concepting, our team mapped personas and user journeys to uncover where AI could add the most value. Once we identified those high-impact moments, we moved fast into design and prototyping—testing how users might interact with intelligence that feels adaptive, not abstract.
Our approach drew on Grand Studio’s AI Integration Framework: a structured method for embedding responsible, human-centered AI principles into product strategy and design.
Along the way, we continually prioritized ideas based on clarity, trust, and feasibility. We maintained a balance between ambition and practicality that allowed us to deliver a tangible, credible proof of concept.
- User-centered insight
Mapped real user journeys to identify moments where AI could assist, anticipate, and simplify decision-making - Strategic framing
Focused on defining how AI could meaningfully shift consumer behaviors and financial confidence, not just automate existing tasks - Focused discovery
Identified clear market gaps and recurring friction points to ensure our concepts solved real-world challenges, not hypothetical ones - Rapid concepting
Built high-fidelity screens and interaction models that simulated authentic AI behavior—bringing the concept as close to real as possible
Shaping the next generation of financial decision-making
Through our work on Beacon AI, we uncovered opportunities that extend far beyond budgeting and goal planning. These insights reveal how AI can help reshape personal finance into something more adaptive, responsive, and deeply human.
Evolving to meet real financial lives
Today’s financial tools still treat people as data points—organized, categorized, and largely static. Real life isn’t. Family structures shift, careers evolve, and goals change. Beacon AI shows the potential for intelligent systems to learn from context and grow alongside users, creating experiences that reflect the fluid nature of people’s financial lives.
Principles for designing with AI
As AI technology continues to evolve, design plays a critical role in ensuring it serves people responsibly. From Beacon AI, we established guiding principles that define how to build trust and value into intelligent systems:
- Protect human autonomy:People should always remain in control of their decisions unless they explicitly authorize an agent to act on their behalf
- Automate with intention: offload tedious tasks to AI so people can focus on what matters most
- Guide with transparency:Keep users informed and empowered throughout the experience
Toward a new era of personalization
The next generation of financial experiences will move beyond reactive tools toward anticipatory intelligence—systems that adapt, advise, and evolve as people do. Beacon AI offered a glimpse of that future: a more personalized, emotionally intelligent approach to finance that balances innovation with trust.
This is where financial design is heading: from static products to living, learning relationships between people and their money.
Proving the potential of AI-powered finance
Beacon AI demonstrated how thoughtful design and emerging intelligence can work together to transform everyday financial decisions. By combining scalable frameworks, adaptable design, and human-centered principles, the concept set a new bar for what responsible AI in personal finance can achieve.
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Scalable AI framework
The modular system we created can flex and expand as technology evolves—enabling future integrations across use cases like savings automation, investment insights, and personalized goal coaching. It’s a foundation for innovation, built to grow responsibly.
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Adaptable by design
Beacon’s adaptable UX and design system can be implemented quickly and iteratively, offering enterprise teams a clear starting point for bringing AI capabilities to market. Every element from interface to interaction model was crafted for clarity, transparency, and trust.
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Building trust in AI
Through prototyping, we validated how people engage with intelligent systems when transparency is prioritized. The result: an experience that feels reliable, personal, and empowering—AI that supports confidence, not confusion.
Collaborate with us
Our fast-paced, insight-driven approach led to a proof of concept that reimagines what’s possible in personal finance, an intelligent and human-centered future shaped by design and AI.
Beacon AI wasn’t just about imagining the future of finance; it was about showing what it takes to build it. Grand Studio helped turn an abstract idea into a tangible direction for the industry, proof that even in the most traditional sectors, bold design can bring the future within reach.
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