TSB — Retail Banking App
Removing every point of friction
TSB needed to grow customer savings balances ahead of a strategic business milestone. I led the end-to-end redesign of the entire retail savings journey, shaped and designed in a 2-day Hot House with senior stakeholders, ready to be built and shipped within weeks.
MY ROLE
Lead UX / Product designer
FORMAT
2-day Hot House + build
SCOPE
Full savings range, iOS
and Android
STATUS
Live
Impact at a glance
+61%
Week-on-week sales
23→30%
Start-to-submit conversion improvement
19→29
Weekly sales
2 days
Concept to signed-off
02
My role
End-to-end ownership across a 2-day sprint
Design lead
Sole designer across the full savings journey product selection, application flow, and confirmation states
Hot House facilitation
Worked in real time with product, commercial, and engineering stakeholders over 2 intensive days
Rapid prototyping
Designed and iterated at pace, presenting and refining concepts with decision-makers in the room
End-to-end delivery
Took designs from Hot House output through to build-ready specs and live launch
03
Problem
Friction was costing balance growth
TSB’s retail savings journeys had accumulated friction over time, inconsistent patterns, unclear product differentiation, and a conversion rate that left significant balance growth on the table. With a commercial target tied to a strategic business milestone, the brief was urgent: redesign the entire savings range quickly enough to ship and move the needle.
“The challenge wasn’t just redesigning the journey, it was making high-stakes design decisions at speed, with the people who’d approve or block them in the same room.”
Reframe
From “reskin the savings journeys” → “remove every point of friction between a customer and opening an account, in two days”
04
The Hot House
Two days, all decision-makers in the room
Rather than the usual design-review-revise cycle, the Hot House format put all decision-makers; product, commercial, legal, engineering, in one room for two days. Decisions that would normally take weeks of back-and-forth were made on the spot.
Day 1 - Define and diverge
Mapped existing journey pain points, aligned on commercial priorities, and explored design directions with stakeholders reacting in real time.
Day 2 - Converge and sign off
Refined the preferred direction, resolved constraints with legal and engineering present, and left with a signed-off design ready to build.
The working flow went up on the wall halfway through Day 1, with product, legal, and engineering all feeding back live via Post-its. A sticking point around failure states turned into an on-the-spot discussion — an agreed direction on the wall, not a list of comments to resolve later.
05
Design decisions
Design decisions that reduced cognitive load
Problem
Poor product differentiation
Customers couldn’t quickly distinguish between savings products, interest rates, access terms, and key benefits were buried. This was contributing to a 70% drop-off rate at the product selection stage.
Decision
Lead with the number that matters
Restructured product cards to surface interest rate and term at a glance, with secondary detail available on expansion. Reduced cognitive load at the point where customers were most likely to abandon.
Before
After
06
Outcome
Immediate movement against a clear target
The business case was built on a clear gap: TSB’s authenticated savings journey converted at 65% against a market average of 75% and best-in-class of 90%. Closing that gap across 170k annual app starts represented a significant commercial opportunity.
+17k
Additional completed applications target
£1.2m
Incremental revenue target
£88m
Balance growth target
Conversion benchmark — authenticated savings journey
TSB pre-launch 65%
Avg 75%
Best 90%
In the first week post-launch, the redesigned journey showed immediate movement against those targets. Weekly sales jumped +61% week-on-week, and start-to-submit conversion improved from 23% to 30%, early signal of progress toward the 75% market average.
19 → 29
Start-to-submit conversion improvement
23% → 30%
Completion rate improvement
What I’d do differently
The Hot House format was highly effective for speed, but the error rate post-launch suggested we needed more structured edge-case review time. I’d push for a dedicated technical review session before build handoff in future sprints of this format.