Bringing best-in-breed banking online.
Best in branch, missing on mobile.
Wells Fargo Premier serves high-net-worth clients, the ones with $250,000 or more in accounts or investments. In the branch, Premier was best in breed. On mobile, it didn't exist. These clients were stuck using the standard Wells Fargo app, which had no premier feel. As Wells stood up a new division for affluent clients, Chase Private Bank, Bank of America, and Citi were already pulling ahead with apps built for this segment. The job was to build a Premier iOS app that brought the personalized in-branch relationship online.
Research, alignment, then a system.
I led a competitive read of the Chase, BofA, and Citi private banks, 14 user interviews, and branch visits in LA and San Francisco shadowing personal bankers and Premier customers. That fed five personas, journey maps, and one defining insight: clients wanted immediate access to their banking team through chat and video, not voicemail tag. Because Wells was deeply siloed, I ran alignment workshops to get teams like Benefits and Premier onto shared goals. Then we built the app IA-first on a new, more luxury design system, with a follow-the-sun model: the US team designed by day, the Poland team prototyped overnight, and we reviewed each morning.
A premier experience, online.
After handing the documented design to the development team and rolling out an MVP to a subset of users, post-launch interviews showed clear gains. Research also reshaped the roadmap: stakeholders assumed account aggregation would be a marquee feature, but Premier clients deliberately keep a wall between accounts and didn't want them blended on mobile, so we moved it to the background. Executives and key stakeholders fell in love with the design, and it moved the business toward a real premier brand.
Process
Identify
SMART goals and a clear scope: improve Premier perception, raise satisfaction, cut confusion, lower support cost.
Research
Competitive read, 14 interviews, 4 branch visits, 5 personas, journey and future maps.
Ideate
Alignment workshops with execs: affinity diagrams, dot voting, and Rose/Thorn/Bud to converge.
Design
IA, wireframes, and high-fidelity on a new luxury design system. My Team, Benefits Hub, net worth, planning.
Test
Prototype testing with current and potential customers, refined iteratively before development.
Implement
Documentation for the dev team, design-system components for affluent products, and a prototype to evangelize internally.