01 // Product design / React
Northwind Banking
A rebuilt mobile banking app for 1.2M customers. Redesigned onboarding raised activation by 24%.
- Client
- Northwind Bank
- Role
- Lead product designer
- Duration
- 9 months
- Year
- 2026
Northwind’s mobile app had grown feature by feature for eight years. New customers abandoned onboarding at the identity check, and support tickets about finding basic actions made up a third of all inbound contacts.
The goal was a full rebuild of the customer-facing app: faster sign-up, a home screen that surfaces what people actually do, and a component library the in-house team could keep extending.
How it came together
Step 01
Listen to the drop-off
I watched 30 session recordings and ran 12 interviews with people who started onboarding but never finished. Most stalled at document upload, not at the form fields we had assumed.
Step 02
Rebuild the first ten minutes
Onboarding was cut from nine screens to four. Document capture got live edge detection and clear retake feedback, and every step shows exactly how long is left.
Step 03
Design system in React
Alongside the app I built a token-based component library in React with the engineers, so design and code shared one source of truth from week three.
Step 04
Staged rollout
We shipped to 5% of users, then 25%, then everyone, watching activation and support volume at each stage before widening.
The new onboarding went live to all 1.2M customers in March 2026. Activation rose by 24% within the first quarter, and the component library now powers three other products at the bank.
+24%
Onboarding activation
-31%
Navigation-related tickets
4.7
App store rating, up from 3.9