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Process
1
Understand
Stakeholder discovery with credit unions and tech partners
- Conducted discovery sessions with credit union clients (Collective) and technology partners (EverLink) to map real user pain points and align on scope.
- Clients included Prospera Credit Union, Gulf & Fraser, BlueShore Financial, and Vancity — each with different user bases and risk tolerances.
- Defined two core goals: granular card-locking options for security control, and a simplified flow for reporting lost or stolen cards.
2
Research
Competitor analysis to anchor design in familiar patterns
- Analyzed card security features across Scotiabank, TD, CIBC, RBC, and PayPal.
- Identified common UI patterns — toggle-based locking, modal confirmation flows, and card management hubs — that Canadian users already understood.
- Used findings to avoid friction: don't reinvent card security, improve it.
3
Information Architecture
Navigating constraints to find the right home for the feature
- Identified a structural gap: the existing app had no account-specific page where card security logically belonged.
- Ran internal brainstorming to test labels. Landed on 'Account Security' as a clear, familiar term that matched industry conventions.
- Result: seamless integration of both features under a single, intuitive hub — reducing navigation complexity without restructuring the whole app.
4
Design — Card Locking
Expanding locking options while staying within implementation constraints
- Extended the existing Lock'N'Block mechanism with granular controls: block by transaction type (ATM, international, contactless, e-commerce) rather than all-or-nothing.
- Used toggle switches and checkboxes to make complex configurations scannable and reversible — users felt in control without feeling overwhelmed.
- Built a high-fidelity Figma prototype for stakeholder review, scoping features against what the dev team could ship.
5
Design — Lost/Stolen Reporting
A single hub for card security emergencies
- Designed the lost/stolen card reporting flow to sit alongside the locking feature in the new Card Security section.
- Addressed the user concern of being able to report a card issue quickly — without hunting through multiple menus.
- The unified hub reduced cognitive load: users could lock, report, and manage cards without leaving the same section.
6
Feedback & Handoff
Walkthrough sessions and detailed spec delivery
- Presented the prototype to stakeholders and collected actionable feedback that was incorporated before final spec.
- Held walkthrough sessions with the engineering team to address implementation questions and prevent handoff drift.
- Detailed documentation minimized discrepancies during development and preserved design intent through to production.
Outcomes
- The new Card Security section consolidated card management into a single, accessible hub — users could lock, unlock, and report cards without navigating multiple locations.
- Workflow efficiency improved by an estimated 30%, with support call volume projected to drop 20% as users gained the ability to self-serve card security actions.
- Accessible navigation and visual hierarchy ensured all users could manage their cards independently.
What I Learned
- Earlier user feedback would have surfaced specific edge cases (like distinguishing lost vs temporarily misplaced) before the mid-fidelity stage, reducing late-stage iterations.
- Balancing feature complexity with user expectations required active stakeholder negotiation — collaborative scoping sessions were essential to keeping the feature set coherent.