I started noticing the problems with people around me. Someone struggled to find their bank statement. Someone couldn't find a simple task on their desktop online banking platform when they had no problem with the mobile app. Small things, but they happened constantly, and they clearly caused real stress.
When I dug into why, one pattern kept coming up. People weren't confused because they didn't understand banking. They were confused because the mobile app and the desktop platform felt like two completely different products. The layout adjusted for the device (fine!) but the structure, the navigation, the order of things, none of it matched. Every time someone switched platforms, they had to relearn where everything was.
Two participants put it plainly during the interview:
"The layout feels like there's too much information especially when I use my laptop and the stuff you actually want always feels completely hidden."
"I couldn't find the mortgage information on the mobile app then I went on to my laptop and everything looks completely different."
Behind both quotes is the same problem: people who knew what they needed but couldn't find it. That's not a minor inconvenience. That's a barrier to financial independence.
I interviewed 8 UK-based participants (recruited through family, friends, and local Facebook group) ranging from 24 to 74 years old. I wanted a real spread of digital confidence, not just tech-comfortable users.
I also conducted an expert review of three major UK platforms: Lloyds, HSBC, and Monzo. Monzo, notably, has no desktop platform at all which is already a significant gap for users who prefer or need to complete certain tasks on a computer. Lloyds and HSBC both offered mobile and desktop, but with noticeably inconsistent navigation structures between the two.
The interviews confirmed what the expert review suggested. The core problem wasn't any single feature but it was that users had to hold two different mental models of the same product in their head simultaneously. That cognitive load was exhausting, and for some users it was a genuine barrier to managing their own money confidently.
If I could make the navigation structure identical across mobile and desktop so that anything users learn to find on their phone exists in exactly the same place on their laptop then I could remove that mental overload.
Paired with a customisable dashboard that lets users choose what appears on their home screen, the design could go further: not just consistent, but personal. They see what matters to them. Everything else is still there, just not in their way.
The customisable dashboard in one sentence: Users pick what they want to see and do on their main screen, and the platform remembers it.
Four participants tested the prototype across both mobile and desktop in a moderated usability study. The finding I was most pleased with: users found one of the proposed navigation design is easy to learn and said they could complete tasks without having to go through multiple steps or clicks to find what they needed.
Compared to testing the same tasks on their real banking apps, they accessed features four times faster on the prototype.
But not everything worked as I expected.
I'd designed a 'preview changes' step into the dashboard customisation flow, the idea being that users could see how their dashboard would look before committing to saving it. It felt like a thoughtful addition. In testing, 75% of participants missed it entirely and thought they'd already saved their changes when they hadn't.
I removed the preview step. Users can now save directly after adding a menu item, and can always remove it afterwards if they change their mind.
75% of participants found the navigation consistent and familiar across both platforms, the core problem the project set out to solve. Task completion was four times faster on the proposed design compared to existing non-customisable banking platforms.
More than the numbers, what stayed with me was how participants described the experience. Easy to learn. Everything where they expected it. No unnecessary steps.
For users who had described digital banking as overwhelming, confusing, or embarrassing , that simplicity is the point.
