Preet Singh Design

Preet Singh

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Preet Singh

Mockup of the Dialogue Duos mobile app showing two phone screens. The left screen displays the home dashboard with language pair options and progress stats, while the right screen shows an in-app interface.

Details

Tufa

Designing a Cashback Platform for Social Impact

As the Founding Product Designer at Tufa, I led end-to-end design of a fintech product that reimagined cashback as a way to sustain care, support one another, and give with dignity. In this role, I shaped everything from early concepts and flows to visual design, a entire design system, and the shipped MVP. It was a role where I constantly switched between big-picture strategy and tiny interface details .

role

Founding Designer

duration

August–Dec 2025

areas

Product Strategy, UX/UI, Design Systems

Team

3 Founders, 4 Developers, 2 Designers

01 Background & Problem Framing

The Founder's Story

Tufa began with a deeply personal moment for our founder, Steve Lane. Several years ago, Steve was heading home from work when he was struck by a drunk driver while riding his scooter. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, and for a time his recovery was uncertain.

What ultimately carried him through were the people around him: his wife, his friends, and a community who showed up for him in ways big and small. But Steve also experienced how support naturally fades over time, even though caregiving needs don’t.

our core question

How might we make it easy for someone who wants to support a cause or someone they care about… to do so in a sustainable, ongoing way, without writing a check?

The Problem

Generosity isn't without inconvenience. People want to help but:

Support fades over time

Giving costs money

Helping takes effort

The Idea

"Earn cashback from your everyday purchases and automatically put it to work for the people and causes you care about — friends, family, or a cause close to your heart — all at no cost to you

Why "tufa"

Tufa is a porous rock that forms from small layers of mineral deposits accumulating over time, each one thin and unremarkable on its own, but together building into something solid and lasting.

We loved the metaphor: small aactions, lasting impact

02 Research

I conducted 10 conversations to uncover what motivates people to give.

Research Insights

Convenience sparkles motivation

Most tools prioritize drills over dialogue. Learners crave confidence, not just correctness.

Transparency builds trust

Language isn't neutral. Many apps lack context around American systems, customs, or everyday norms, leaving learners unprepared.

Community drives consistency

People keep showing up when they feel part of something collective.

Translating Insights into Product Experience

Onboarding

Where users first find motivation and understand what Circles are.

The Portal

Which builds trust by showing progress and transparency.

The Extension

Which creates convenience, keeping support going automatically.

03 Onboarding: The Motivation

Sign Up Flows

The first thing I worked on was the sign-up flow, back when Tufa was still focused on caregivers. Users identified as either a Caregiver or an Advocate — someone supporting a caregiver — then shared their story or who they were helping.

Visually, I explored two themes: soft green for caregivers, warm yellow for advocates. The design system was still evolving, so I was defining patterns on the fly.

But the problem wasn't the visuals — it was the flow itself. We saw about a 58% drop-off at the story-entry step, driven by no progress feedback, too many required inputs up front, and an emotionally heavy question asked too early — all before users saw any clear value exchange.

From a UX perspective, this created high cognitive load: people had to do too much before understanding what they'd get in return.

After seeing the high drop-off in the original version, I simplified onboarding into a three-step flow: sign up, optionally add the Chrome extension, and start shopping.

Around this time, our brand designer and I were formalizing the identity, which is when I started formalizing components and applying them to real product flows

In the final version, only the first step had text inputs — the rest focused on momentum and quick action, using visual imagery over long text so users could instantly grasp how it worked.

The new flow drove a 45% higher completion rate and 32% faster time-to-first-session (via Google Analytics), and it's where the visual foundation came together — primary colors, bold CTAs, and a rule-of-4s spacing system, with every margin and padding scaled in 4-pixel increments.

Informational Modals

Visualizing value before action

Once users finished onboarding and landed on the site, the next step was helping them take action — either creating a new Circle or joining one.

A Tufa Circle was the core of our product: a shared space where users could invite family or friends to contribute funds toward a goal.

Before dropping users into a form, I designed a short informational modal walking through the full journey.

Create a Circle Flow

Progress &
Guidance
User
Activity
Progress &
Guidance
User
Activity
Progress &
Guidance
User
Activity
Progress &
Guidance
User
Activity

From there, users entered the Create a Circle flow — a clean, three-step process: choose the type of circle you're starting, tell us about it, and review before sharing.

Prioritized minimal forms, clear UI cues, a guided flow, and a friendly layout.