Company Context
You’re the PM for Northbank, a US-based digital bank with 12M monthly active users and $9.4B in annual card spend. Northbank’s mobile app is the primary channel for customer service and self-serve money movement: 78% of all support contacts originate from mobile. Revenue comes from interchange, premium subscriptions ($8/mo), and partner offers.
Northbank competes with Chime (strong onboarding + simplicity), Cash App (fast P2P + investing), and Capital One (robust banking features). Northbank’s differentiation is “all-in-one money management” (checking, savings, credit card, bill pay, and budgeting) but the app has become feature-heavy.
User / Market Scenario
Northbank’s user base skews mass-market with meaningful accessibility needs:
- 35% have household income <$60k and rely on the app for day-to-day cashflow management.
- 18% report using accessibility features (larger text, screen readers, high contrast).
- 22% are bilingual (English/Spanish) and frequently switch device language.
Key Personas (from research)
| Persona | Segment Size | Primary Jobs-to-be-Done | Current Behavior | Top Pain Points |
|---|
| Cashflow Juggler | 30% | Avoid overdrafts; know “what’s safe to spend” | Checks balance 3–6x/day | Confusing available balance; alerts hard to find |
| Bill Payer | 25% | Pay bills on time; set up autopay | Uses bill pay monthly | Setup feels risky; unclear confirmation |
| Credit Builder | 20% | Track card utilization; pay down debt | Weekly card payments | Payment flow has too many steps |
| Power User | 15% | Budgeting, categories, exports | Heavy navigation | App feels cluttered; hard to find tools |
| New-to-Digital | 10% | Do basic banking confidently | Avoids settings | Fear of making mistakes; jargon |
Problem / Opportunity
Over the last 2 quarters, Northbank saw a rise in “can’t complete task” complaints and costly support contacts.
Quantitative signals
- Task failure rate (users who start but don’t complete key flows within 10 minutes):
- Add a new payee (Bill Pay): 28%
- Schedule a payment: 21%
- Lock/unlock card: 14%
- Support contact rate increased from 1.6% → 2.1% of MAUs (+0.5pp). Each contact costs $4.20 on average.
- Premium conversion is flat at 2.4% of eligible users, and user interviews suggest “the app feels overwhelming” reduces trust.
User research highlights
- Users don’t distinguish between Current Balance, Available Balance, and Projected Balance.
- Confirmation states are inconsistent (sometimes a toast, sometimes a new screen), leading to “Did it go through?” anxiety.
- Navigation labels don’t match mental models (e.g., “Move Money” contains card payments, bank transfers, and bill pay).
- Accessibility audit flagged WCAG 2.1 AA issues: insufficient contrast in secondary text, inconsistent focus order, and non-descriptive icons.
Your VP Product wants a UI redesign proposal that answers: What are the most important factors to consider when designing this user interface—and how would you trade them off?
Your Deliverables (what to cover in your answer)
- Clarify the goal and define the primary user outcomes for the redesign (what “better UI” means here).
- Choose a target segment and top 1–2 use cases to optimize first, and justify why.
- List the most important UI design factors you would prioritize (e.g., usability, accessibility, trust, error prevention, information hierarchy, consistency, performance, localization), and explain the trade-offs.
- Propose an MVP redesign scope (navigation + 1–2 key flows) and what you would explicitly defer.
- Define success metrics and an experiment/validation plan (qual + quant).
Constraints
- Timeline: 10 weeks to ship an MVP to 20% of users.
- Resourcing: 6 mobile engineers (iOS/Android), 1 design lead, 1 content designer, 1 researcher (part-time), no additional headcount.
- Compliance: Must meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and banking compliance requirements (clear disclosures for transfers, audit logs, and error handling).
- Technical: App startup time cannot increase by more than 100ms; analytics instrumentation is inconsistent across older screens.
- Risk: Any UI change that increases failed transfers or duplicate payments is considered a Sev-1 incident.
You do not need to produce pixel-perfect mocks, but you should be specific about structure (navigation, hierarchy, states), and how you’d make decisions under these constraints.
