Building a Scalable Digital Banking Foundation

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As Bank of the West underwent a major rebrand and digital transformation, customers experienced fragmented navigation, inconsistent workflows, and aging interaction patterns across banking products. Multiple teams were working in parallel, creating the need for a scalable design foundation that could support consistency across channels while accommodating regulatory and operational requirements.

My Role: Lead UX Designer
Timeframe: 6 months
FINANCIAL SERVICES
DESIGN SYSTEMS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
ENTERPRISE UX
Cropped image of left half of a laptop screen, showing a SaaS dashboard of assets under review for approval, with columns for status and activity.
THE SYSTEM FOUNDATION
Creating a unified design framework for a multi-platform banking ecosystem.
The initiative established a shared design foundation spanning mobile, desktop, and responsive banking experiences. Component libraries, interaction patterns, navigation structures, and page templates were developed to support consistency across products while enabling future growth and implementation by distributed teams.
Collage of screenshots from the design library, showing colors, font styles, and components.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Simplifying navigation and improving access to critical banking tasks.
Existing navigation patterns varied across platforms and experiences, creating inconsistency for customers. New information architectures standardized navigation structures, clarified content hierarchy, and created scalable frameworks adaptable across mobile applications, desktop experiences, and future banking products.
A screenshot shows complex flow diagrams.
COMPLEX WORKFLOW DESIGN
Redesigning ACH payments and business banking workflows for clarity and compliance.
A regulatory update to Same-Day ACH processing created an opportunity to simplify one of the platform's most complex experiences. Dense forms were restructured into progressive workflows that improved comprehension, reduced cognitive load, and better supported business banking customers across devices while maintaining compliance requirements.
Screenshots of multi-step UI for ACH Payment flow.
PRODUCT STRATEGY & INSIGHTS
Using customer behavior and operational constraints to guide design decisions.
Research findings, usage data, and stakeholder collaboration informed experience improvements across key banking journeys. Explorations included expanding Quick Balance into a more insight-driven experience that surfaced relevant financial information while reducing friction for everyday customer interactions.
Collage of strategy slides from a strategy deck, a callout quote from user research, and designs for a Quick Balance screen that includes widgets for other banking insights.
IMPACT
Established a scalable UX foundation for future digital banking experiences.
The work contributed a unified design system, standardized navigation structures, and improved workflow models that supported ongoing modernization efforts across Bank of the West's digital ecosystem. The resulting framework enabled greater consistency across products while balancing customer needs, operational requirements, and regulatory constraints.
A collage of devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile is shown with the UI in them.
END OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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