In late 2019, ANZ began its largest digital transformation to date. The project—labelled ANZ Plus—would go on to relaunch the core product suite; completely rebuild the tech stack; and implement the first rebrand in decades, the biggest in it’s century old history.
I was appointed as 1 of 3 founding design leads from the bank onto the initial team where I ideated, prototyped and validated CX flows, branding and product IA alongside our engineering and research partners.
Pre-launch promotional video for the app · Produced with in-house studio
Breaking the bank (figuratively)
Australian banking is one of the most highly regulated, risk-averse sectors out there; significantly more concentrated compared to other countries. The ANZ Plus initiative was a case study in overcoming organisational inertia to deliver a finance tool customers could actually get excited about.
My tenure saw me working on everything from complex prototypes, design systems, accessibility integration, branding, animation/interaction, and pretty much everything else needed to ship the thing.
Quick Facts
From Jul 2019 – Dec 2020
Brought on as Product Designer
Reported to Head of Innovation
As with any greenfield project, the process was anything but linear—always adapting to shifting regulations; limitations with our new/old infrastructure; or any other spanner that could (and would) show up.
I continuously revised our design concepts, rolling with the punches to create highly interactive prototypes that our research partners would test fortnightly with customers and dog-food internally.
Version 1
Version 3
Version 7
Version 10
Version 14
Shipped
Interactive demo of a salary distribution feature
Made using Meta's Origami Studio
Example of tweening between UI elements
Built with Lottie · mocked in ProtoPie
Concept animation for payday in-app
Assets in Cinema4D · comped in Principle
A key driver for ANZ to bring me on was so I could experiment with emerging tools and technology, similar work to what I'd done with them previously. I used this remit to build out complex demos, integrating: device input, live data, voice and camera feeds, accelerometer feedback, and live linking third-party servers or multiple devices.
Separately, as the team grew in size—I began building out tools & resources for our engineers and designers directly. These plugins and automation scripts were the foundations of the design system I would go on to lead. One example below is a custom Sketch plugin called Light Switch; which enabled instant UI theming back in the days before tokens or variables.
Rather than simply acquiring a small neobank as their competitors did—ANZ wanted to build one they could mould from scratch, one that relied on their pervasive brand trust. However the brand itself hadn't been meaningfully updated in at least 20 years, desperately in need of an uplift to meet digital expectations.
This meant developing the app amongst ever-shifting brand standards. Initially, a liberating exercise for a designer—albeit one with a heavy governance toll. It enabled me to push beyond of what was 'accepted' as BAU and build support for: native iOS/Android UI toolkits, dark mode theming, wide-gamut colour spaces, APCA accessibility, bi-orientation, Lottie (and later Rive) integration, system and variable fonts, and much more.
