Transforming Federal Bank's Mobile Experience
OVERVIEW
FedMobile's 10 M+ users struggled with cluttered navigation and poor feature discoverability, limiting engagement and business growth. I redesigned the core experience by simplifying the IA, removing redundancy, and introducing a scalable modular layout optimized for mobile-first users.
GOALS
- Make it easy to find and complete essential banking tasks quickly and confidently.
- Create a clear, scalable structure that surfaces key modules, improves speed, and supports future expansion.
- Increase engagement with underused services and reduce support load caused by confusing navigation.
SOLUTION
I conducted a full UX audit and redesigned FedMobile's core information architecture. This included streamlining flows, consolidating overlapping features, and introducing a clear, modular layout built for scalability and speed. The redesign focused on improving clarity, discoverability, and accessibility for diverse mobile-first users across India.
RESPONSIBILITIES
UX research, information architecture redesign, interaction design, prototyping, design system, and cross-functional collaboration with product, engineering, and business teams.
OUTCOME
+28% adoption of search
+16% increase in repeat users
Higher visibility and usage of revenue-focused modules, improving engagement.
Wanna dive into more specifics? Let's go deeper.
The challenge
FedMobile's home experience was cluttered and inconsistent, so users struggled to find and complete common banking tasks. As a result, 67% of services received < 5% engagement and 23% of support requests were about features users couldn't locate, creating churn, lost cross-sell revenue, and frustrated customers.
Increase discovery and usage of revenue-focused modules.
Help customers quickly find what they need with clear, consistent patterns and accessible UI.
Team Alignment Sessions
Before starting design, we held focused sessions with Product, Engineering, QA, and business teams to understand whether FedMobile needed quick fixes or a full home-screen overhaul. We reviewed past decisions, internal feedback, support complaints, and known UX gaps to align on what truly mattered.
Key services were buried, hurting engagement and revenue.
Help customers quickly find what they need with clear, consistent patterns and accessible UI.
Monthly module additions were outgrowing the current layout.
Gathering insights
We combined analytics, past product decisions, user interviews, and session observations to understand why customers struggled across the app. The patterns revealed low feature awareness, inconsistent behaviors, and navigation friction that slowed users down. Personas and competitive analysis further confirmed the need for a clearer, more scalable home experience.
DATA & ANALYTICS
Our analytics tools, including CleverTap gave us a clear picture of how customers were actually using FedMobile. The data showed that while users logged in frequently, they engaged with only a small fraction of the app. Behavior flows, heatmaps, and funnel analysis revealed strong navigation friction and low discovery across key services.
Most users relied on just a few modules, while the majority of banking and lifestyle services went unnoticed.
Backtracking and early exits indicated users were missing important modules and facing friction in deeper navigation.
User Research
Our conversations with users helped us understand why they struggled despite the app offering dozens of services. Interviews and activity recordings showed that people weren't avoiding features intentionally, they simply didn't know those features existed. These insights validated the behavioral patterns we saw in analytics.
Users often scrolled aimlessly or repeated the same taps because they couldn’t locate deeper modules.
Many were surprised to learn FedMobile offered services like, lifestyle tools, and non-banking investments they never discovered on their own.
Competitive Analysis
To understand where FedMobile stood in the market, we reviewed 18 Indian banks, 2 international banks, and 11 fintech apps. Traditional banks struggled with feature-heavy layouts just like FedMobile, while fintechs excelled at clarity, hierarchy, and surfacing relevant actions quickly.
Most banking apps faced similar issues with dense menus, hidden modules, and unclear information hierarchy.
Fintech apps showed how simplified IA, cleaner layouts, and prioritized actions could drastically improve discoverability.
Personas
From interviews and behavioral data, we identified three user groups shaped by digital literacy, confidence, and banking needs. These personas guided how much complexity to surface and how predictable each interaction needed to be on the home screen.
Personas ranged from highly digital-savvy users to traditional customers needing simpler, clearer paths.
Each persona's goals influenced which modules needed prominence, which patterns had to be consistent, and which tasks required the least friction.
Before redesigning the home experience, we needed to unpack past product decisions and evaluate the design and technical constraints shaping what was realistically possible.
Earlier choices, like surfacing credit cards, banner-driven promotions, and burying key modules, created an inconsistent home layout and hid essential services.
The redesign had to work within the existing but improved design system, meet accessibility needs, and support multiple user types while remaining visually consistent.
Legacy architecture limited navigation changes and required search, module ordering, and new components to fit within existing performance and SDK constraints.
Exploring Directions
We explored multiple ways to simplify navigation, surface essential services, and create a home experience that could scale with the bank’s growing ecosystem. Through rapid sketching, mid-fidelity variants, and cross-functional reviews, we tested different layouts, module groupings, and interaction patterns. These explorations helped us balance business requirements, user expectations, and technical realities before moving into final design directions.
Exploring layouts, grouping logic, and module hierarchy to improve discoverability.
Expanding icons, card styles, and patterns to support future modules and user segments.
Exploring ways for business teams to dynamically surface high-value modules.
Defining unified patterns for CTAs, navigation, and interaction behaviors.
Validating Concepts
We tested early designs with users to confirm whether the new structure improved navigation and discoverability. Their interactions with search, quick links, and reorganized modules helped us refine clarity, ordering, and entry points, ensuring the final experience felt intuitive and aligned with real user behavior.
Module Prioritization
Testing helped us confirm whether the data-driven module order aligned with user expectations and common task paths. These sessions validated which features needed prominence and surfaced moments where ordering required refinement.
Users naturally gravitated toward frequently used services, reinforcing the need for priority-based placement.
A reorganized layout shortened task paths and reduced backtracking across deeper modules.
Quick Links
User testing validated the shift from automated MRUs to manually chosen Quick Links. Participants preferred having control over what appears on their home screen and appreciated predictable, curated access to their most-used modules.
Giving users the ability to select and reorder shortcuts felt more intuitive than system-generated suggestions.
Clear selection patterns and simple reordering made Quick Links easy to configure across user types.
Interaction Behaviour
Testing exposed micro-friction points around inconsistent CTAs, icon clarity, and entry points. These insights guided refinements that made interactions more predictable and trustworthy throughout the home experience.
Users expected identical actions to behave the same way, prompting us to unify interaction patterns.
Ambiguous icons were updated to improve clarity, reinforce affordance, and reduce hesitation.
Accessibility
Testing highlighted the need for better visual clarity, predictable interactions, and comfortable touch targets, especially for users with varying digital literacy levels. These insights influenced updates to contrast, sizing, and cognitive load across components.
Larger tap areas reduced errors and made key actions easier to perform on smaller screens.
Enhanced contrast, clearer icons, and simpler layouts helped users navigate with greater confidence.
Bringing It All Together
The final design brings together search, prioritized modules, and customizable Quick Links to create a cleaner, faster, and more intuitive home experience. Refined layouts, consistent components, and stronger hierarchy reduce friction across tasks, while updated icons and accessibility improvements ensure the interface works smoothly for all user types.
Search Integration
The redesigned search creates a universal entry point for users who previously had to scroll, guess, or backtrack to find key modules. Placing search in the top bar makes it instantly discoverable and reduces the effort required to access deeper banking features.
The top navigation placement makes search visible and predictable for all user types.
Results surface modules, categories, and sub-categories in one unified view.
Banking Services Card
A dedicated card now highlights essential banking products that were previously hidden under parent categories. This layout helps users quickly access revenue-generating services while giving the bank flexibility to promote priority modules.
Key services appear upfront, improving engagement and task completion.
Business teams can promote modules dynamically without UI changes.
Updated Icon System
The new icon set improves clarity across modules with consistent shapes, weights, and visual meaning. This refresh supports better scannability and aligns the interface with a more modern, cohesive style.
Icons share a unified visual language for faster comprehension.
Clearer metaphors reduce hesitation and improve user confidence.
Enhanced Account Card
The account card was restructured for clarity, consistency, and direct access to frequently used actions like debit and credit card management. Updated icons and predictable CTAs make the card more informative and easier to navigate.
Unified actions eliminate confusion between similar-looking buttons.
Debit and credit card entry points are now placed where users expect them.
User Type Adaptations
FedMobile serves Regular, Minor, and Celesta users, each with different visual themes and priorities. The redesigned structure adapts to each segment while maintaining a consistent core experience.
Color palettes and accents adjust per user segment without altering layout.
A shared structure ensures predictability regardless of account type.
The Results
The redesign improved discoverability, increased engagement across key banking modules, and made everyday tasks faster and easier for millions of users. With clearer navigation, structured prioritization, and a more intuitive home experience, users interacted more confidently with revenue-driving services while returning more frequently to the app.
Increase in Repeat Users
Increase in Search Usage
Revenue Module Engagement
New Module Adoption
*some metrics are not available for public domain.
Customer Feedback
Learning from Project
Reflecting on this project, I grew not just as a designer, but as a systems thinker who can balance user needs, business priorities, and technical realities at scale.
Learned to create interfaces that work for users across wide digital literacy levels.
Saw the power of combining analytics with real user stories to shape accurate solutions.
Early alignment with product, engineering, and business made scalable decisions possible.
GitHub Plugin Project
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