True North
Libro Credit Union - Online Banking
End to End Feature Designs . Ideation
Contributed to the strategic vision and design of a digital-first, coaching-enabled Online Banking experience aimed at empowering users to manage their financial lives with confidence.
Methods:
User interviews, ideation session, stakeholder conversations, fidelity vs, impact exercises, component design, wireframing, and prototyping
My Role:
Product Designer
Goal:
Bring meaningful innovation to Libro by deeply listening to our Owners and designing solutions that align with their real needs and expectations.
Guided by our online experience principles this project aims to defragment the digital journey and create tools that empower Owners to manage their finances confidently and independently.
Duration:
2 years from concept to features in 4 stages
Team:
Cross-functional team with 4 product owners, digital and marketing managers, 6 developers, a BA, a QA, and 2 UX Designers and Me
Tools:
Figma, Miro, Jira, 11:FS Pulse, Google Meet,
Understanding Our Owners
RESEARCH
To better understand what enhancements our Owners want, we implemented a passive Qualtrics survey directly into Online Banking and the Mobile App, asking: “What digital features would you like to see in the future?”
The intercept was live for two months and collected over 100 open-text responses.
I then used a custom Microsoft Copilot model to clean and evaluate the comments by removing duplicates, filtering out unrelated complaints or support questions, and identifying recurring themes.
There were 5 themes that were identified from the Owner feedback: Payments & Expense Management, Financial Overview, Personal Financial Insights & Learning, Business Account Features, and Notifications & Alerts.
🧩 Affinity Map
Sticky Notes to Solutions
IDEATION
💡 Ideation Sessions
I partnered with two other UX Designers to lead a series of five cross-functional ideation sessions. These sessions were rooted in real Owner pain points and guided by our core Online Banking principles: simplicity, self-serve, security, control, and seamlessness.
Together, we generated over 150 ideas across a range of financial experiences., generating over 150 ideas to address key Owner pain points. After reviewing the boards, we filtered out non-digital, duplicate, or incomplete ideas, resulting in a refined list of 42 viable concepts. These ideas were grouped by user pain points and accessibility themes for clarity and alignment.
⚙️Feasibility vs. Impact
Next, we led a feasibility and impact workshop with business leaders and digital team leads. Each participant voted based on impact potential and implementation effort, helping us prioritize initiatives strategically.
From this process, the top 8 ideas selected for further exploration were:
Market Research Findings
I completed a competitive analysis by leveraging 11:FS Pulse to review industry-leading digital banking experiences, and by exploring the websites and public demos of individual financial institutions.
I found that most major financial institutions including CIBC, Scotiabank, RBC, and credit unions like BECU, America First Credit Union, and Coast Capital had already introduced Insights and Spending tools into their online and mobile banking experiences. Since we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, I’ve taken inspiration from the features these FIs have introduced to shape our own approach to spending visualizations and financial insights.
Notification Centers and push notifications were also widely adopted and considered essential parts of the digital banking experience.
While many FIs did offer goal-setting tools, our envisioned version was more advanced, allowing for custom, flexible, multi-goal tracking beyond what’s typically available in the market.
In contrast, features like subscription tracker, split a bill, and multi account integration were less commonly offered, likely due to their higher complexity or integration challenges.
Final Features & Widgets
EasyJoin
Easy Join allows Owners to seamlessly sign up for Libro Online Banking using credentials from other financial institutions, bringing the principles of open banking into the Libro experience. It also enables Owners to integrate accounts from multiple banks into one place for a unified financial view, enhanced insights, and the ability to connect third-party services to personalize their dashboard.
Current Expense Split
Past Expense Split
Split a Bill
With the Split a Bill feature, you can easily divide expenses by either snapping a photo of your bill and splitting it with someone right there, or selecting a past transaction from your account history and choosing a contact to share the cost with.
ExpenSmart
By clicking on the Subscriptions section or through occasional pop-ups, Owners will see a clear, categorized list of all their active recurring payments like streaming services, apps, or memberships. From there, they can easily manage them, with the ability to toggle off or cancel subscriptions directly, helping them stay in control of their expenses without leaving Online Banking.
Spending and Insight Widgets
Owners can now view both their credit score and their unique FinStrong score, a custom metric that reflects financial health based on spending habits. Integrated directly into the dashboard are personalized insights on spending, saving, and borrowing, making it easier to understand overall financial behavior. Owners can also explore spending types, shown as clusters or lists depending on their preferences, to quickly see where their money is going. Category-based breakdowns, along with spend-to-income and debt-to-income graphs, provide a clear, visual picture of money flow, empowering smarter budgeting and decision-making.
Business Goals
Goals widgets are interactive, visual tools designed to help individuals or teams set, monitor, and track progress toward specific business objectives. With a clear and intuitive layout, they make it easy to stay focused and measure outcomes. They also let you create custom goals, define milestones, and tailor tracking to suit your business needs.
Mobile Notifications
With this feature, Owners receive real-time push notifications for account activity such as withdrawals, upcoming payment due dates, and new expenses. Alerts appear directly on the phone’s lock screen, keeping Owners informed and in control of their finances without needing to log in.
Notification Center
Previously, Libro only offered notifications for transfer approvals. This enhanced feature introduces a fully redesigned in-app notification center, delivering real-time updates for a wider range of activity including bill payments, deposits, withdrawals, upcoming due dates, and product updates. With a sleeker interface and centralized view, Owners can now stay informed and manage their finances more proactively.
If you're having trouble viewing the embedded prototypes, you can use the buttons below to access the high-fidelity versions directly in Figma. Use the left-hand panel in Figma to navigate between different flows and explore each feature or widget in detail.
All portfolio visuals referenced in this case study are also available through the button below for easy access.
Status Overview
🟢 Spending & Insight Widgets
Successfully implemented and live in production. These visual tools are now helping Owners better understand and manage their finances directly within Online Banking.
🟡 Notification Center & Business Goals Tracker
Development is complete and both features are currently in QA. These enhancements will bring proactive account updates and flexible goal-setting tools to the digital experience.
🟡 ExpenSmart
Currently in active development. This feature is designed to provide Owners with a smarter, AI-powered view of their spending patterns and financial behavior.
🔴 Push Notifications, EasyJoin, & Split a Bill
These features have been moved to the backlog and are not prioritized at this time due to higher complexity, integration dependencies, or resource constraints.
