Newcastle Strategic Solutions decided it was time that customers could access their savings account on a mobile app. This would allow customers an easier and more convenient way to manage their savings account, after getting a huge amount of feedback from customers through surveys and speaking to them in stores. NSSL is owned by Newcastle Building Society, so we used their brand as a base to create the first variant of the app and design system, before rolling it out to clients.

The mobile app was also going to be a white label product that would then be sold to clients such as Ford Money, Paragon, Aldermore, Charter and many more. Clients had given feedback to NSSL over the previous 12 months+ that they wanted a mobile app, as their customers had also given similar insights to what we had received from ours. This was then the deciding factor into being given the funding for the mobile project to begin.

I was the lead mobile app designer at NSSL. I joined the project around 4 months after it began, which led to inconsistencies and poor design choices. I worked really hard to ensure that we were designing and building something that was right for customers. I made sure through discovery workshops, concept creation and usability testing, that we were creating something that was not only accessible, but was a delightful experience too.

I worked really closely with a product owner and developers to ensure that we were meeting business goals, and that the app was being developed to a high standard (as previously, this was not the case). I created a mobile design system to help with this process. It ensured consistency throughout designs, the built screens, and helped the team to be more efficient when creating user flows and journeys.

As the mobile app was a white label product, that was then to be sold to clients, it meant that the workload quickly ramped up once clients had seen what we had started to do with the NBS version of the app. Clients were quickly onboarded, and the deliverables were very high and fast paced.

Having created the design system, this helped me quickly replicate the screens and journeys per client, ensuring that they were accessible and consistent. Consistency and accessibility was something that had slipped in previous products, once clients had taken it over, so I wanted to make sure that the design system solved this problem. It helped to manage client expectations, and get a level of sign-off before the app was built by presenting them with the design system components.

There were a lot of challenges that I faced whilst working on the mobile app. I joined a few months after the project had started, meaning that decisions were made without a designer, which led to a lot of poor choices/lack of thought around experience and customer journeys. We had a lot of back and fourth for a little while with senior stakeholders around time management and deadlines. We needed to take a step backwards and make changes to the work that has already been done, to bring it up to standard. This was a reluctant decision, but they ended up agreeing after I presented back the issues and explained how many issues this could cause to the roadmap further down the line. 

Another challenge we had on the mobile team was that we couldn’t get any budget secured to do usability testing, or research. I managed this by spending a lot of my own time doing research, understanding competitors, speaking to clients/customers and usability testing with friends, family and people around the business. I was the lead designer on the project, and I also mentored a junior designer on the team, but between the two of us, this was a lot of work! This wasn’t an ideal solution, however it worked well and we ended up getting some great insights to iterate and build better.