Case Study — Fintech / Mobile Banking

Hey! Banco — Onboarding & Navigation Redesign

Hey! Banco is a fully digital bank for young adults in Mexico, built as a modern alternative to Banregio's legacy app. With no physical branches, the mobile app is the only place users onboard, understand the product, and build trust — and the original experience was overwhelming people before they ever got there.

Role

Senior UX/UI Designer

Focus

Onboarding & Navigation

Team

6 designers, 10 developers, 1 PO, 2 stakeholders, 2 financial advisors

Duration

1 year (2019 to 2020)

Tools

Figma, FigJam, UserTesting.com, Google Analytics

Hey! Banco app home screen and debit card

20%

Higher user retention post-launch

30,000+

New accounts opened after redesign

63%

Of users did not know how far into onboarding they were — before the redesign

My Role

I led the UX and interaction design for onboarding and the app's global navigation — owning the flows, information architecture, and usability decisions behind how the product works, and applying our visual designer's design system (color, type, iconography, component styling) across every screen shown here. I worked alongside a cross-functional team of six designers covering individual product areas (debit and credit cards, rewards, insurance), plus two stakeholders, one product owner, two financial advisors, and a development team of ten (five front-end, four back-end, and one technical lead). Working with that development team meant handing off detailed design specs, running feasibility check-ins throughout the build, and pairing interactive prototypes with QA passes on the built screens to keep what shipped true to what was designed — keeping the experience cohesive, intuitive, and technically feasible across the platform.

Process

From chaos to clarity

Before jumping into solutions, I mapped the shift I needed to lead the team through — from a cluttered, disorienting first-time experience to one built on radical clarity.

Research

Why users abandoned onboarding

I combined quantitative funnel data with qualitative interviews to understand both the usability issues and the emotional friction driving drop-off.

User interviews Surveys Funnel & drop-off analysis (Google Analytics)

63%

Did not know how far along they were in onboarding

58%

Felt confused by documentation requirements

47%

Felt overwhelmed during account setup

“Users were not abandoning onboarding because tasks were hard — they were abandoning it because they felt uncertain and lacked confidence. Onboarding was not failing functionally. It was failing emotionally.”

Laura Garza

27 · B.A. in Art · Marketing lead · Monterrey, Nuevo León · Roommate + 1 dog

“I hope to be able to buy a house in a maximum of 10 years. I better start building my credit history now.”

Goals

Make the most out of her money
Get approved for a credit card
Build an investment portfolio before 30
Track income and spending better

Frustrations

Great products often carry high annual fees
Cannot get approved without credit history
Her bank's app is confusing and slow
Worried about getting scammed

Ideation

Turning insight into a UX strategy

Using the research, I facilitated collaborative ideation sessions to explore how onboarding and navigation could be restructured — challenging assumptions and validating direction early, before committing to high-fidelity solutions.

Key focus areas

Reducing cognitive load during first-time use
Improving onboarding clarity and sense of progress
Simplifying navigation hierarchy across products
Creating predictable, easy-to-follow user flows
Respecting native iOS (Human Interface Guidelines) and Android (Material Design) conventions
Meeting accessibility standards for color contrast, tap-target sizing, and screen reader support

Activities

Crazy 8s to widen the solution space before committing to one direction
Rapid wireframes to pressure-test flow logic before any visual design
IA exploration to simplify the navigation hierarchy across products
Group critiques to catch blind spots before testing with real users
FigJam whiteboarding to keep the team aligned on one flow model

Whiteboard sketch of card and flow system

Card system & flow sketches

Registration flow logic

Paper prototype for 3D Touch card actions

3D Touch paper prototype

Crazy 8s sticky-note wall

Wireframing & validation

Solving structure before visuals

I translated the strategy into low-fidelity wireframes and flows to validate onboarding logic and navigation structure — reducing risk before any visual design work began.

Approach

Low-fidelity wireframes
Flow diagrams and interaction mapping
Rapid iteration and internal reviews
Early usability validation — no visuals yet

What this validated

Onboarding flow logic and progression
Step-based interactions that reduce cognitive load
A simplified navigation hierarchy across products
Task clarity and predictability

Usability testing

What real users told us

Real users tested the flows to validate clarity, effort, and confidence — focusing on onboarding clarity, navigation discoverability, task efficiency, and user confidence. Sessions ran through UserTesting.com alongside internal moderated testing to reach a broader pool of first-time users.

What improved

Faster onboarding

Users completed flows with fewer errors

Reduced uncertainty

Users stopped guessing how much was left, so they kept going instead of abandoning partway through

Better discoverability

Users found key features without hunting, so fewer gave up out of frustration before ever using the product

Higher trust

Users felt more comfortable completing tasks

What we learned — honest frictions

Welcome screen needed a clearer purpose
Stronger visibility of security and data protection
Mixed expectations around promotions
Faster access to the security token needed
Clearer step indicators required
Visibility of digital signature for legal compliance

Before screens used for testing

View interactive prototype in Figma →

Final product

The redesigned onboarding flow

The final flow, screen by screen — from entry point through account creation and verification.

Entry & verification

Final onboarding flow: entry point through verification

Account setup

20% higher retention. 30,000+ new accounts.

By restructuring the information architecture and clarifying key user flows, the experience became faster to complete and more reassuring — reducing drop-off and building the trust users need to commit to a new financial product.

Measured by comparing the first fully launched version, released in mid-2020, against 2019 baseline numbers.

Faster

Onboarding completion with lower abandonment

Clearer

Reduced confusion at critical decision points

Higher

Task success rate and first-time user confidence

“In fintech, designing for emotional clarity and trust is just as important as designing for usability — and it is what moves the business metrics.”

Looking back: the welcome screen stayed on my list of honest frictions longer than it should have. Users moved through the rest of the flow with far more confidence, but that first screen still did not tell them clearly enough why they were there. It is a reminder that clarity has to start before onboarding begins, not partway through it.