Tese.io
How designing an SME loan application fueled Tese’s market launch and validation.
Product (UX/UI) Design Web Design MVP Launch
Roles and Responsibilities
Lead Product Designer: 0→1 Product Design, UX Strategy, Visual design direction.
UI Designer: Web design, Rapid prototyping, Cross-Functional Execution, Dev Handover.
Timeline and Team
Jul – Aug 2023
Dev: Dhruv & Content/Video: Natlie Hua
Tools
Task Management: Monday & Slack.
Design & Development: Figma, Photoshop & Squarespace.
Background
Tese.io was born to bridge a critical gap in business finance. Its core aim is to make sustainable funding accessible, transparent, and straightforward for growing companies (SMEs). The founder, Kuzi, envisioned a dual-sided digital platform:
For SMEs: Simplifying green financing and connecting them directly with the capital needed to accelerate their environmental initiatives.
For Financial Institutions: Providing the trusted infrastructure and verifiable ESG data needed to scale sustainable lending and manage portfolio impact with confidence.
For this case study, I'm focusing just on the website and the SME loan application here, leaving the institutional side for another day.
The Problem
Based on the founder's early market findings, SMEs face a massive roadblock as traditional commercial loan applications are notoriously dense, slow, and intimidating—especially when factoring in complex green eligibility requirements. For an early-stage startup testing an unproven business model, our core assumption was simple: if we didn't turn this messy financial qualification process into a fast, clear, and reassuring digital experience, business owners would walk away before giving us a try.
Watch how Tese connects growing companies with sustainable financing.
My initiatives
As the Lead Product Designer, I partnered directly with founder Kuzi to translate the vision into a live, market-ready product. Before jumping into solutions, my priority was aligning with the founder to manage expectations early—focusing strictly on core experience design rather than getting pulled into scope creep.
To bring this to life under real-world startup conditions, I navigated three key trade-offs:
Time
Faced with tight, split development windows, instead of spending weeks on deep research, I focused on my judgment—making fast, smart choices based on simple UX patterns and the founder's insights to keep us moving.
Technical Limitations
Working within strict engineering boundaries with a solo developer, I made sure to include engineering constrains (Desktop only), efficiency and build expertise early, helping me to design lightweight UI components to ensure a seamless dev handover and execution.
Resources
Operating as a lean team of four, I personally owned the end-to-end scope—spanning project roadmaps, UX workshops, UI design, and brand identity without dedicated user research, graphic or copywriting support.
Operating in a zero-to-one environment, I delivered:
The Brand's Digital Footprint: Designed and helped launch Tese’s initial website to establish early credibility and market presence.
The SME Loan Application Flow: Distilling a complex, multi-layered financial qualification process into an intuitive experience.
Solution
01/ Designing the brand’s digital footprint.
Impact
Launched Tese’s first website to build immediate credibility and enable the founder to raise awareness, run a beta launch, and test the platform.
Building credibility online
Before asking businesses to trust us with a loan application, we needed an immediate layer of credibility. I led the visual design, website design, and copywriting—structuring the site layout to cleanly communicate our core values, build instant trust, and drive engagement.
The new public face gave Tese an immediate presence, helping validate the brand for early-stage SMEs and potential partners alike.
Hero Landing Page
Designed to instantly communicate Tese’s core value proposition - making green financing accessible and transparent for growing companies.
Tese Products & How It Works
Broke down a complex dual-sided platform into clear, digestible steps so both SMEs and financial institutions immediately understood the ecosystem.
Knowledge Hub & FAQ
Built to make knowledge Hub a core selling point and demystifying dense green eligibility requirements reducing anxiety by answering core questions upfront.
Global Navigation & Information Architecture
Designed a scalable dropdown and mobile menu to cleanly organize dense educational resources (Academy & Resources) without cluttering the primary user journey.
02/ The SME Loan Application Flow
Impact
A streamlined flow that kept drop-off rates low and allowed SMEs to apply for sustainable funding without hitting a wall of friction eliminating ambiguity.
My Goal
Take a notoriously dense, intimidating commercial loan process and make it approachable for growing business owners. Therefore, reduce cognitive load, improve conversion rates, and create clear visibility into application status.
My Approach:
Breaking down complexity: Instead of bombarding users with a massive wall of fields, I architected a clean, 3-step qualification experience using progressive disclosure for the loan application.
Designing for constraints: Working closely with our developer, Dhruv, I relied on lightweight, modular UI components that were straightforward to build without sacrificing clarity.
Guiding the user: Focused heavily on simple UX patterns to reassure applicants as they entered sensitive financial and green eligibility data.
SME Profile creation
To reduce profile creation friction, I designed a streamlined 3-step onboarding architecture that instantly translates company profile and industry inputs into a customized dashboard, delivering clean ESG data that accelerates SMEs to apply for a loan easily.
Dashboard & Overview (Home State)
Based on the onboarding data, I created the central hub where users can view their company profile, active metrics, and overall status prefilled. This reduced editing or adding unnecessary company information keeping the profile clean and ready for loan submission.
Design Decision & UX Rationale:
Card-based Layout: Grouped ESG indicators into digestible modules so business owners can audit their requirements at a glance.
Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Placed a prominent "Apply for finance" button alongside active status summaries to minimize navigation friction and guide users directly into the funnel.
Step 1: Loan & Project Selection
Using a card-based UI, I designed the initial project type selection screen featuring options like Green Project, Social Impact Project, and Finance for Business. By using visual cues instead of dense text blocks, I made it effortless for users to make quick, clear decisions.
Design Decision & UX Rationale:
Visual Anchor Cards: Used distinct, context-relevant imagery paired with "Best For" descriptions. This helps SMEs instantly identify which financial product matches their sustainability model without needing to parse heavy legal definitions.
Clear Step Guidance: Implemented a persistent "Step 1: Choose Loan Type" header to orient users within a multi-step workflow.
Step 2: Form & Metric Configuration
To keep things simple and prevent overwhelm, I designed a structured data input flow using collapsible accordion sections and metric dropdowns. This gave users clear system feedback, kept them in control, and made moving through the application feel effortless.
Design Decision & UX Rationale:
Progressive Disclosure: Broke a massive questionnaire down into manageable sections (Project Scoping, Risk Management, etc.) with real-time completion tags ("Completed" vs. "In progress"). This prevents cognitive overload on data-heavy compliance forms.
Simplified Micro-Copy: Refined verbose metric labels into clean, direct field names ("Reporting Frequency" instead of long-winded data collection descriptions).
Step 3: Review & Submit (Terms Agreement)
Finally, I designed the submission screen to house the Project Management Agreement and legal terms cleanly. This ensured SMEs stayed completely in control, could easily track or return to unfinished sections, and had full transparency into all terms and conditions.
Design Decision & UX Rationale:
Plain Language Compliance: Condensed dense legal clauses into numbered, scannable commitments so business owners can quickly understand their obligations before checking the authorization box.
High-Contrast CTA: Isolated the final "Submit Application" button to create a clear psychological checkpoint for the user.
Application Success Modal
To wrap up the journey, I designed a confirmation success modal featuring an application tracking ID, which transitions smoothly into an updated dashboard equipped with a real-time progress tracker.
Design Decision & UX Rationale:
Immediate Feedback & Reassurance: Replaced ambiguous waiting instructions with precise timeline expectations ("7 business days") and direct instructions on how to track progress via the dashboard.
Real-time Updated Dashboard: Post-submission dashboard to act as an active tracking hub, showcasing real-time status updates (under review), application IDs, and accessible ESG indicator cards so users can monitor progress and manage multiple projects seamlessly.
Impact
30+ Sign Ups
Market Presence: The work helped Tese launch with confidence, defining a clear market position and enhancing brand presence across the ESG and sustainable finance space.
The platform successfully established first-round fundraising momentum and secured 30+ sign-ups at the Saigon Textile Expo.
Winner at the 2024 G20 TechSprint
Global Recognition: Tese was officially recognized as a winner at the 2024 G20 TechSprint for innovation in sustainable finance technology.
This prestigious acknowledgment validated the product’s core architecture—proving that simplifying complex green financing and ESG data collection can successfully scale on a global stage.
Reflection
Personally, going from zero-to-one taught me to get comfortable with ambiguity. When you don't have months for deep user research, your best tools are your design intuition, close alignment with the founder, and the courage to make fast, smart calls.
Moreover, the collaboration taught me:
Developer-designer partnership: Working side-by-side with Dhruv completely shifted how I think about handovers. By treating our technical constraints as creative guardrails rather than roadblocks, I learned how to design simpler, more modular systems that actually ship in the real world.
Finding simplicity in complexity: Tackling green finance showed me that deep down, users don't want to feel like they're doing homework. Distilling dense, intimidating regulations into a clean, human experience reminded me why I love product design: we get to make the complicated feel effortless.
This balance between compliance and simplicity became central to how I shaped Tese—and it's the exact mindset I bring to every zero-to-one product I build.
Got an idea?
Let’s launch together
Building Tese from the ground up was an incredible zero-to-one journey—if you're looking for a designer to bring clarity and structure before launch, connect with me.
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