Kiwibank

Overview

At Kiwibank, I’ve led complex design initiatives that support the bank’s digital transformation, including foundational UX, Open Banking readiness, and accessibility maturity. Working across platforms, teams, and compliance layers, I’ve helped shape future-facing experiences that are scalable, inclusive, and strategically aligned while uplifting internal practices and systems.

Key Focus Areas

• Leading the experience design of Open Banking across multiple digital channels
• Championing accessibility through internal guidelines and embedded testing
• Restructuring key areas of the experience to support scalability, clarity, and future regulatory features
• Collaborating across silos to align design, product, engineering, and marketing

The Challenge

Kiwibank is transitioning away from legacy systems toward a modern, flexible digital ecosystem. A key initiative was designing for Open Banking a new government-regulated framework that enables customers to share financial data and make payments via authorised third parties.

The challenge was to design this experience in a way that is:

• Trust-building and easy to understand
• Technically adaptable across channels (web, iOS, Android)
• Compliant, accessible, and future-proof while navigating organisational politics, legacy constraints, and risk-averse processes.

My Role & Approach

Cross-Channel Experience Design

I led the end-to-end UX for Open Banking across Kiwibank’s customer-facing platforms, ensuring a consistent and trust-centred experience across web, iOS, and Android.
My role included:

• Mapping and prototyping user journeys for data sharing, payments, and consent
• Facilitating co-design and scoping workshops with senior stakeholders, product, marketing, compliance, and vendors
• Collaborating with our in-house researchers to validate designs iteratively
• Creating high-fidelity prototypes used not only for testing, but for internal education and cross-team alignment

These artefacts helped build shared understanding across silos and accelerated buy-in from leadership and engineering teams.

Improving System Foundations

As I worked through Open Banking flows, it became clear that foundational UX gaps, especially in the settings area, would hinder future scalability.

I initiated and led a staged restructure of the settings experience, untangling legacy dependencies and clarifying architecture to support both immediate compliance goals and long-term platform expansion.

Working closely with product and engineering, I ensured that changes were pragmatic and phased to reduce delivery friction while improving clarity and reducing cognitive load for users.

Accessibility & Design Advocacy

Alongside product work, I led internal efforts to strengthen accessibility awareness and practice across the design team.

This included:

• Authoring internal accessibility design guidelines
• Promoting inclusive testing and QA practices
• Driving conversations about inclusive defaults at the system and component level

These efforts contributed to a culture shift where accessibility became embedded into design discussions and documentation, not just compliance checks.

Outcomes (In Progress)

• Mapped, tested, and prototyped Open Banking journeys ahead of roadmap milestones
• Achieved alignment across cross-functional stakeholders, including product, engineering, marketing, and compliance
• Delivered a scalable restructure of the settings area, now serving as a foundation for upcoming regulatory features
• Uplifted team accessibility maturity through guidelines, education, and systemic improvements

Reflection

This project was a blend of deep complexity and long-term thinking, where trust, regulation, and innovation had to work in harmony.

Designing Open Banking wasn’t just about delivering a feature, it was about reshaping how people interact with financial trust in a shifting technological landscape.

I’m proud to have contributed not only to the product, but to the practices, systems, and mindsets behind it. This experience has deepened my confidence in leading through ambiguity, aligning stakeholders around complexity, and building design maturity as a foundation for innovation.