Building a Scalable Digital Banking Foundation

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Designed a scalable UX foundation during Bank of the West's digital transformation, establishing reusable interaction patterns, information architecture, and responsive components that unified banking experiences across mobile and desktop. The work created a shared UX framework that enabled multiple product teams to modernize banking experiences simultaneously while supporting regulatory requirements, complex transactional workflows, and the bank's broader rebrand.

My Role: Lead UX Designer
Timeframe: 6 months
DESIGN SYSTEMS
FINTECH
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 CHALLENGE
Modernizing core banking experiences and workflows while meeting regulatory compliance requirements.
Bank of the West was undergoing a major rebrand under its parent company, including a visual identity shift, but the project wasn't simply about refreshing the interface. Multiple product teams were redesigning different parts of the banking experience simultaneously while balancing regulatory requirements, business priorities, and an evolving visual identity. The challenge was creating consistency across a rapidly changing ecosystem without slowing delivery.
UNDERSTANDING THE BANKING EXPERIENCE
Research showed that inconsistent patterns, not individual interface problems, were creating friction across the banking experience.
I analyzed customer behavior, reviewed analytics, and studied existing banking workflows to understand how customers navigated accounts, payments, onboarding, and business banking experiences. The analysis revealed recurring inconsistencies in navigation, terminology, and transactional workflows across products. Same-Day ACH payments provided a particularly clear example, exposing how regulatory complexity, unfamiliar terminology, and dense forms compounded one another.
A screenshot shows complex flow diagrams.
DEFINING THE PRODUCT FOUNDATION
Creating a reusable UX foundation that made different banking products feel like parts of the same system.
Rather than redesigning isolated pages, I established reusable interaction patterns, information architecture, and responsive components aligned with a mobile-first strategy. The foundation gave multiple product teams shared patterns for navigation and interaction while remaining flexible enough to support different banking workflows and evolving business requirements.
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.
SYSTEM DESIGN
Building a scalable design foundation before redesigning individual experiences.
I helped establish a reusable component library spanning mobile and responsive web, introducing standardized navigation models, responsive layout patterns, and information architecture that could support multiple banking products while remaining flexible for future expansion.
Collage of screenshots from the design library, showing colors, font styles, and components.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Applying the design system across critical banking workflows.
The design system enabled consistent experiences across account management, onboarding, ACH payments, and financial dashboards. New information architectures and interaction patterns simplified complex workflows while giving distributed teams reusable foundations for future banking products.
A screenshot shows complex flow diagrams.
COMPLEX WORKFLOW DESIGN
Same-Day ACH became a test case for translating regulatory complexity into a clearer transactional experience.
A regulatory update to Same-Day ACH processing created an opportunity to redesign one of the platform's most complex workflows. I restructured dense forms into progressive steps, clarified unfamiliar terminology, and reorganized the information hierarchy to reduce cognitive load while preserving required compliance and transactional detail across devices.
Screenshots of multi-step UI for ACH Payment flow.
OUTCOME
Established a reusable UX foundation that helped multiple product teams modernize banking experiences while balancing customer needs, operational requirements, and regulatory constraints.
The framework unified navigation, interaction patterns, and responsive components across products while providing a scalable foundation for future banking experiences. It also demonstrated how complex transactional workflows such as Same-Day ACH could be simplified without compromising compliance.
A collage of devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile is shown with the UI in them.
END OF CASE STUDY SUMMARY
Full case study available with additional research and design documentation.
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