Challenge

The current process for requesting, activating, managing, and using cards within the banking app creates friction for users and leads to a high dependency on customer support channels. Functionality is scattered and poorly structured, negatively impacting adoption, early usage, and perceived product value. This affects both the customer experience and core business objectives.

Hypothesis

f the card experience were redesigned as a connected, guided, and scalable flow—integrating acquisition, activation, and initial usage—friction would be reduced, digital conversion would increase, customer satisfaction would improve, and operational load on the call center would decrease.

Applied Methodology

To approach the redesign of the cards section in this banking app, I defined a custom methodological framework that combines elements from the Double Diamond, Design Thinking and Lean UX principles. This hybrid approach allowed me to address the challenge from a strategic, systemic, and outcome-driven perspective.

Double Diamond as the overarching structure

I used the Double Diamond model as the macro structure of the process. This helped me organize the work into two major phases: thoroughly exploring the problem and then developing effective solutions. The four stages unfolded as follows:

• Discover: I led a deep exploration of pain points from three key perspectives: user, business, and operational channels. I mapped the entire journey of card usage, identifying real—not assumed—frictions.
• Define: Based on the evidence, I prioritized critical problems and linked those insights to key business metrics such as digital conversion, early activation, and call center traffic.
• Develop: I conducted both functional and strategic benchmarking with leading products, generating design hypotheses that addressed user needs and aligned with business goals.
• Deliver: I implemented a comprehensive, native, and guided redesign that complied with usability and accessibility standards required in the financial sector.

Design Thinking

From the outset, I approached this challenge not just as an interface problem, but as a complete service within the bank’s digital ecosystem. To do so, I used service design tools such as:

• Multi-layered journey maps (user, business, operational channel).
• Identification of moments of truth and critical drop-off points.