Scotiabank Corporate & Commercial Banking Platform

The Challenge: Scotiabank needed to unify their corporate and commercial banking platforms across six countries (Canada, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru). Each market had different systems, creating inconsistent user experiences, increased maintenance costs, and slower feature deployment.

My Role: As Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for conducting cross-country user research, defining service blueprints, creating interaction patterns, and establishing a scalable design system that could accommodate regional variations while maintaining consistency. I worked closely with product managers, developers, and regional stakeholders to balance global standardization with local market needs.

Key Responsibilities:

• Led user research sessions with corporate banking clients across 6 countries to understand workflows and pain points
• Designed end-to-end experiences for file-based services including Host-to-Host (H2H), Host-to-Web (H2W), and File Transfer capabilities
• Created comprehensive service blueprints mapping front-end interactions with back-end systems and third-party integrations
• Established design patterns and component library in Figma used by 8+ designers across different squads
• Facilitated workshops with regional teams to validate designs and gather feedback on local requirements

Throughout the project, we made several critical design decisions that shaped the final platform:

1. Modular Architecture: Designed a component-based system that allowed regional teams to configure features based on local regulations without requiring custom code. This reduced development time by 40% for market-specific implementations.

2. Progressive Disclosure: Implemented a layered information architecture that presented core functionality upfront while allowing power users to access advanced features. This reduced cognitive load for occasional users while maintaining efficiency for daily users.

3. Status-Driven Navigation: Reorganized the information hierarchy around transaction status rather than service type, enabling users to quickly identify files requiring attention regardless of payment method.

4. Context-Aware Help: Integrated contextual guidance and tooltips throughout the interface, reducing the need for separate training materials and decreasing support tickets related to feature discovery.

Balancing Global Consistency with Local Needs: One of the biggest challenges was creating a unified experience while respecting regional banking regulations and user expectations. We learned that successful standardization requires flexibility—defining core patterns that must remain consistent while clearly documenting where regional customization is acceptable.

Stakeholder Alignment Across Markets: With teams spread across 6 countries and multiple time zones, maintaining design consistency required robust documentation and regular alignment sessions. We implemented weekly design reviews and created a comprehensive design decision log that helped teams understand the rationale behind design choices.

Iterative Validation: Early user testing revealed that corporate banking users had much higher tolerance for information density than consumer banking users. This insight allowed us to optimize screen real estate for efficiency rather than oversimplifying interfaces, which would have frustrated expert users.

Technical Constraints as Design Drivers: Working within legacy banking systems taught us to design with technical constraints in mind from day one. Involving developers early in the design process helped us create solutions that were both user-friendly and technically feasible, avoiding costly redesigns during implementation.