A Fairytale Gone Wrong

The country's leading bank ran digital banking across three separate products: mBank (personal banking, mobile), mBankCo (business banking, mobile), and InternetBank (web, serving both). All three looked a decade old, and routine tasks felt like paperwork. Recognizing the problem, the bank issued an RFP inviting agencies to pitch redesigned task flows.

We were an agency with no FinTech track record, pitching against firms with plenty. Matching them flow-for-flow meant losing on credentials, so we changed the game: instead of task flows, we would present fully designed prototypes for all three apps.

That decision set the pace for everything. Our UX department split into three teams, one per application. I took two of the three products: the personal mobile app and the web app. This case study covers my process, my decisions, and what I'd still defend.

I started with internal research: a survey of colleagues who actually used the bank's apps. It gave us demographics, habits, and pain points fast.

Core users were 18 to 35. Personal banking happened almost entirely on mobile, business banking on the web app, with little overlap. That split shaped the information architecture later.

Competitive landscape. I analyzed direct and indirect competitors in the country and the region to spot the gaps: features users wanted that nobody local offered well.

Two users, two mindsets. The research pointed to two distinct segments: individuals managing personal finances, and professionals handling money for businesses. I built a persona for each to keep design decisions anchored to real needs rather than stakeholder preferences.

Every existing app suffered from convoluted navigation, so I rebuilt the information architecture for both of my products. The rule I set: reorganize aggressively, but keep the mental model familiar enough that a long-time user never feels lost.

First screen, most-used features, zero digging. The dashboard is the first thing users see after login, so it earns the research-backed essentials: accounts, active cards, recent transactions, and a credits and loans section users explicitly asked for. I chose a master-detail layout: the sidebar gives quick access to features, the detail pane shows actions for whatever is selected.

One login, two worlds. Legal regulations forced everyone to register as an individual, with business features unlocked by linking a legal entity. The old app handled this by stacking everything into one endless scroll. My solution: split the sidebar into "Individuals" and "Companies" tabs based on the user's login association. One click, and you're in the right context.

Before

After

The old flow, in all its glory. Making a single payment worked like this: fill out an electronic order form, click "Insert" to file it under a tab called "Entry." Go to Entry, select the order, click "Send for signing," then navigate to the "Signing" tab. Select it again, click "Sign," which moves it to a "Realization" tab. Go there, select it a third time, click "Send for realization." Then refresh the browser manually to find out whether the payment actually went through.

I mapped the entire process in a user flow chart first, which made the redundancy obvious: users were re-selecting the same order three times across three tabs.

The redesigned flow takes two steps. Create the order and confirm it, all on one screen, with templates and batch actions built in. Crucially, I preserved the task logic existing users already knew: same concepts, radically less friction.

Research showed clear demand for effortless transfers, so the team and I proposed "Together it is Easier": send money to phone contacts who also use the app, and split bills and receipts directly in-app. The name plays on the bank's own tagline.

I also sketched a five-year roadmap: QR payments, a personalized secondary navigation for each user's most-used features, and biometric quick balance checks.

We didn't win the pitch. The feedback pointed at our lack of FinTech experience, not at the work, which is both frustrating and fair: it was the exact risk our full-prototype bet was designed to offset. It got us into the room against firms with deep track records. It just wasn't enough to close.

Had it shipped, I would have measured it properly: task success rate and completion time on the payment flow, retention, and NPS, with the 68% workflow-frustration figure as the baseline to beat.

I'd still make the same call. And the project paid for itself in other ways: I designed two interconnected products under a 10-week deadline, ran research through final prototypes on both, and learned how far a small team can stretch when the format of the answer is itself a design decision.