The context:

As part of exploring solutions to the bank's acquisition problem, an app idea was born out of a hackathon.

The idea was simple - build a wallet and peer-to-peer payment app that can onboard users to be able to send and receive money easily. 

This was well before what we know now in apps like Revolut or Bunq.

While I enjoyed the project, I really had a hard time with the business/product management side. The Product Manager was overly attached to the concept of “swipe to pay”, trying to make an Tinder-esque experience, which didn’t test well at all.

But, the identity of the team became that of a "sandbox" team where new features and services are developed for use elsewhere in the bank - which was a massive achievement.

The progress:

• Introduced and ran regular user testing - both for usability as well as product adoption.

• The testing showed clearly that neither the product nor the desired usability were working.

• Re-worked all the existing task flows to be quicker, more efficient, and more elegant.

• Introduced a better way to prioritise the feature requests from business and our product owner so that we weren't designing and building "just to keep busy."

• Collaborated with the engineering team on each feature before design - to better understand the technical constraints, so that we didn't waste time on unfeasible solutions.