Improving customer onboarding and mortgage transfer journeys
My role
Visual / UX Designer
Year
2019
Project details
Client
ICA Banken
Sector
Financial services
Project team
Small design team of another visual designer and a UX designer, working with ICA Banken product stakeholders.
Timeline
14 weeks
Overview
I redesigned customer-facing banking journeys for ICA Banken, focused on becoming a customer and transferring a mortgage.
The work formed part of a wider redesign using the bank’s new design system. The goal was to make complex financial application journeys clearer, easier to understand and simpler to complete across devices.
Mortgage and onboarding journeys involve high-consideration decisions, sensitive personal information and regulatory requirements. The design challenge was to reduce confusion and friction without removing the checks, consent moments and information needed by the bank.
My role was to help simplify the journeys, structure the forms, improve content clarity and produce developer-ready designs that aligned with the new design system.
The problem
The existing application journeys were long, dense and difficult to complete with confidence.
Users needed to understand eligibility, required documents, sensitive data requests and next steps, but much of that information appeared late in the journey or was hidden inside dense form sections.
This created several risks:
users could start the journey without knowing whether they were eligible
document and information requirements were not always clear upfront
long forms increased perceived effort
generic error states made recovery harder
unclear content could increase hesitation or support needs
The business needed more complete, high-quality applications without increasing service load or compromising compliance.
My role
I worked as a Visual / UX Designer, contributing to the structure, flow and interface design of the onboarding and mortgage transfer journeys.
My work included:
auditing the existing application flows
identifying friction points across forms, content and error states
restructuring journeys into clearer steps
applying ICA Banken’s new design system to key application screens
designing responsive layouts across devices
improving microcopy and expectation-setting
defining validation, error and recovery states
creating high-fidelity designs and developer-ready specifications
The project required close attention to user comprehension, regulatory requirements, accessibility and implementation detail.
Design approach
The main focus was to make the application feel more manageable.
Rather than treating the mortgage transfer flow as one long form, I looked at how the journey could be broken into clearer stages: helping users understand whether the product was relevant to them, what information they would need, why certain data was required, and how far they had progressed.
The work balanced three priorities:
clarity for users; so making requirements, steps and next actions easier to understand
confidence for the bank; so capturing the right information accurately and compliantly
delivery efficiency; so using the new design system wherever possible to support consistency and implementation
Key design decisions
Introduce eligibility earlier
Users needed to know whether the journey was relevant before committing time to the full application. I introduced an earlier eligibility step to help users understand basic fit before entering the main form. This reduced the risk of users progressing deep into the journey before discovering they could not continue.
Set expectations before the form
Financial applications can feel demanding when users do not know what information or documents they will need. I added clearer expectation-setting at the start of the journey, including what users would need, why it mattered and how long the process might take. This helped give users a stronger sense of control before they started.
Break long forms into clearer sections
The existing journeys placed a lot of cognitive load on users. I restructured the application into shorter, more logical sections with clearer progression. This made the journey feel less overwhelming and helped users understand where they were in the process.
Improve validation and recovery
Error states needed to help users recover, not simply tell them something had gone wrong. I designed clearer inline validation, field-level guidance and recovery paths so users could understand what needed fixing without losing their progress or confidence.
Keep legal detail accessible but not overwhelming
The journey needed to meet regulatory and legal requirements, but dense legal copy could make the core task harder to understand. I worked on clearer microcopy and layered content patterns, keeping essential consent and explanation visible while allowing more detailed information to sit in expandable areas where appropriate.
Use the design system first
The work needed to align with ICA Banken’s new design system and maintain consistency across devices. I used existing components and patterns wherever possible, extending only where the journey required additional states or behaviours. This helped support consistency, accessibility and implementation speed.
Testing and iteration
The design direction was informed through current-state review, stakeholder input and rapid qualitative testing of prototypes.
Testing focused on whether users understood:
what the journey was asking them to do
whether they were eligible to continue
what information and documents were required
why sensitive information was being requested
how to recover from errors or incomplete fields
Feedback helped refine the sequence, simplify copy, reduce unnecessary effort and improve validation rules before handoff.
Outcome
The project delivered redesigned onboarding and mortgage transfer journeys aligned with ICA Banken’s new design system.
The work created clearer application flows, improved expectation-setting, more helpful validation and more consistent responsive screens for implementation.
I do not have clean post-launch conversion metrics, so I avoid overstating the impact. The clearest outcome I can point to is that the redesigned journeys tested better for clarity and confidence, gave the development team more complete specifications, and created a stronger foundation for improving completion and reducing avoidable support needs.
What I learned
This project reinforced how important trust and clarity are in financial services design.
In banking journeys, users are often being asked to provide sensitive information, make high-consideration decisions or complete tasks they do not do often. Small details; such as when eligibility appears, how errors are explained, and why information is requested can have a large effect on confidence.
It also showed the value of working design-system-first. In regulated product areas, consistency is not just a visual concern; it helps users understand patterns, supports accessibility and makes implementation more reliable.
Reflection
I chose this project because it shows my experience designing financial service journeys where clarity, trust, accessibility and implementation quality all matter.
It required careful interaction design, content judgement, design system application and close collaboration with stakeholders to make complex banking tasks feel more manageable for customers.
