The client challenge

Northbank's console had grown for four years without an owner. Finance teams managing 40+ accounts had to cross three screens to answer a single reconciliation question, and 6 in 10 new workspaces never completed a payment run in their first week. Support was absorbing the difference.

Research

We ran a two-week discovery embedded with Northbank's operations and support teams before touching a single screen.

• 11 interviews with controllers, treasury analysts and agency bookkeepers
• Competitive teardown of 6 platforms including two the client's customers used alongside Northbank
• Session-replay review of 340 first-week workspaces to locate the exact drop-off point
• Pain points: hidden account grouping, ambiguous pending states, approvals buried two levels deep

Strategy & Planning

We reorganised the product around three verbs — see, move, approve — and rebuilt the information architecture so each one owns a single surface.

• Flattened a 4-level navigation tree to 3 primary destinations
• New account-grouping model driven by how teams actually reconcile, not how the ledger stores data
• Approval queue promoted from a settings sub-page to a first-class workspace
• Content strategy: every pending state now names the actor, the amount and the next step

Design Process

Low-fidelity flows were tested on Maze in week four, iterated twice, then developed into a token-driven high-fidelity system.

• 3 wireframe rounds, 2 unmoderated tests with 24 participants
• Design system: 128 components, 5 density modes, dark-first with a compliant light theme
• Typography scale on a 4pt grid; tabular figures across every numeric surface
• Colour system tested for AA contrast at every state, including status pills and charts

Development Support

We paired with Northbank's in-house engineers through implementation so the built product matched the specification without a redesign round.

• React + TypeScript component library published to their internal registry
• Virtualised tables to keep 10,000-row ledgers scrolling at 60fps
• Keyboard-first interaction model for power users, fully screen-reader labelled
• Visual regression tests wired into their existing CI pipeline

Final Showcase

The console shipped in April 2025 across desktop, tablet and a focused mobile approvals experience.

• Desktop: the full treasury console with density controls
• Tablet: side-by-side balances and approvals
• Mobile: approve, decline and comment — nothing else