Understanding Gaps in Customer Banking Adoption and Engagement
What we studied: Across projects, I helped teams understand where customers were getting stuck — opening accounts, activating mobile banking, building trust, saving consistently, or finding relevant financial products.
How I worked: Through discovery research, interviews, usability studies, persona development, and journey mapping, I synthesized customer behaviors, trust barriers, support needs, financial routines, and adoption gaps into insights teams could use.
What the insights shaped: The research informed onboarding journeys, product concepts, channel strategy, customer segmentation, and value proposition directions across multiple digital banking initiatives.
Remote & Assisted Customer Onboarding
The adoption gap: Some customers needed more guidance when starting with formal or digital banking, especially when opening their first bank account or applying for loans online.
What I led: As Lead UX and Service Designer, I collaborated with product owners and managed two UX designers working on digital and assisted onboarding journeys across app and web touchpoints.
What we improved: I guided requirements framing, conducted interviews, and ran usability studies to identify barriers to mobile banking activation and first use. The work focused on making onboarding easier to understand and complete, while considering KYC and identity requirements, assisted support, and customers’ confidence with digital tools.
Financial Inclusion & Savings Behavior
The savings challenge: For underbanked customer segments, the work explored how digital banking could make small but consistent savings feel more accessible and achievable.
What we learned: Research looked at income patterns, financial routines, support needs, and the practical barriers customers faced when trying to save through formal or digital banking services.
What we shaped: I worked on value proposition development and MVP framing for a digital savings proposition. I led junior and mid-level designers in creating mid-fidelity prototypes and recommended features, while collaborating with senior and lead researchers from a partner mobile financial services company to test the concept and refine MVP recommendations.
Customer Engagement & Financial Wellbeing
Beyond transactional banking: In a more digitally active market, the challenge was to create reasons for customers to return to mobile banking beyond payments and transfers — through financial education, product recommendations, gamified journeys, and more relevant money management support.
What we explored: As a Service Design consultant, I led design sprints for product discovery and concept development around mobile banking engagement and financial wellbeing. I facilitated work with senior UX designers, UX researchers, and UI designers to explore how gamified experiences could help customers learn, save, and build better financial habits.
What we designed: The sprint helped turn a broad engagement ambition into digital and non-digital journey concepts that could recommend financial products in a more engaging way, based on customers’ lifestyles and goals.
