OakNorth Bank Product Design
My 18 years of experience working for fintech companies made me the perfect design partner for OakNorth Bank of London. While working an extensive discovery phase for the redesign of their product offerings, I set up shop overseas on a couple occasions, in order to facilitate design sprint training sessions with the broader company.
My Role
Strategy
UX Research
UI/UX Design
UX Management
Workshop Leadership
Timeline
6 Months
“I have had the pleasure of working with Ian twice and have always been impressed by his ability to jump into a project and work quickly with teams at any stage of development. He’s a talented and seasoned product design team who approaches each project with a wonderfully optimistic ‘can do’ attitude, which makes him an absolute joy to work with. If you need a product designer to help you, I highly recommend Ian Nyquist!”
Elena KholThe Problem
OakNorth found itself with a wealth of ideas for product features and content but lacked a cohesive vision for their integration. Despite a surplus of product managers and engineers, the absence of designers posed a challenge in defining the details and overall user experience.
Leadership’s aspiration to involve product managers and engineers in design thinking faced hurdles due to their limited design experience, preventing the team from establishing a solid foothold in this creative domain.
The Process
To address the design gap, OakNorth enlisted me to lead a one-week design workshop in London using “The Sprint Methodology.” The workshop united product managers, engineers, and Nyquist Design experts to streamline ideation, prioritize features, and enhance design thinking.
Research
- User Demographics
- Define User Goals
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Customer Interviews
Empathize
- User Personas
- User Scenarios
- User Testing
- Journey Map
Create
- Flows
- Wireframes
- Visual Design
- Prototype
Test
- Usability
- Track usage
- Design Refinements
Design Workshop
The four-day workshop in London was an all-hands event, with the company divided into six teams of diverse roles. I guided the teams through daily exercises, resulting in multiple product prototypes being designed and built by the week’s end.
Infographic Design
As with many fintech projects, a key aspect of the design involved understanding the data, defining the message, selecting appropriate charts or graphs, and making customizations as needed. In this case, the goal was to visualize the sectors most at risk over time and highlight the overall risk trends.
Four Teams. Three zones.
During my engagement with OakNorth, I supported four product teams across three time zones. This required careful coordination to maintain a smooth workflow and overcome the challenges of working with distributed teams.
The Solution
Nyquist Design’s strategic involvement successfully filled OakNorth’s design gap. The one-week design workshop, centered around “The Sprint Methodology,” enabled teams to align their vision cohesively. Nyquist not only provided a structured framework for ideation but also equipped product managers and engineers with essential design thinking skills. This collaborative approach not only addressed immediate design challenges but laid the foundation for an enduring partnership, empowering OakNorth to infuse design principles into their product development process.
The Results
The collaboration with Nyquist Design yielded transformative results for OakNorth. The once disjointed ideas for product features and content evolved into a more coherent and user-centric vision. The infusion of design expertise and the adoption of design thinking principles led to tangible improvements in the user experience and overall product quality.
Moreover, this collaborative effort boosted team morale, with product managers and engineers embracing their enhanced role in the design process. This case study stands as a testament to how strategic partnerships and focused workshops can drive meaningful change, enabling organizations to overcome creative challenges and innovate successfully.
30+ Product Managers, Engineers, Designers, and researchers empowered with design training, working toward a common goal.