Onboarding rework

A calmer first week for new bank customers.

Company: Fjord Bank (demo)
Year: 2021
Role: Led it
Team: 2–5 people

Five screens from the new Fjord Bank onboarding, from welcome to account ready

18%

increase in activation

−35%

first-week support tickets

Problem

Half of new customers stalled during identity verification. Support tickets spiked in the first week and the flow was designed around internal systems, not people.

My part

I owned the end-to-end flow design, ran two rounds of usability testing, and negotiated the compliance requirements that shaped each step.

Approach

We mapped every step to the regulation that required it, removed what wasn't required, and reordered the rest so people saw progress early. I prototyped in code to test real timing on devices.

Outcome

Activation went up and first-week support contacts dropped. The patterns became the base for the bank's account-opening flows.

Journey map comparing the old 11-step account opening with the new 6-step flow, with drop-off per step — Every step mapped to the rule behind it. Four of eleven had no legal reason to exist.

Team mapping a journey with sticky notes on printed wireframes — Mapping the journey with compliance and support in the room.

Hand sketching mobile screens on paper — Sketching the order of steps before any pixels.

Progress screen, lock screen notification and account ready screen, with design notes — The wait got shorter, but mostly it got honest.

Before and after: a nine-field compliance form next to a single plain-language question — Same legal requirement, one question at a time.

Usability test summary comparing the old flow and the prototype with eight participants each — Two rounds of testing. 3 of 8 finished alone before, 7 of 8 after.

First-week home screen in light and dark mode with a short checklist — An empty account that points to the next useful thing.

Skills

OnboardingUsability testingPrototypingAccessibility