Leading through hyper-growth
Led design across product and marketing at Varo Bank from series B to C.
- Client
- Varo Bank
- Role
- Sr. Dir Design
- Status
- Shipped
- Year
- 2017 – 2018
01
The challenge
I joined as employee 30-something just as Varo closed series B funding. The existing team was two designers, one brand and one product. The entire product surface was one iOS app, and a small marketing site. The marketing team was gearing up for growth, but the product needed a full overhaul, fast.
02
Scope
While leading the UX team I scaled the team from 2 to 5 and I introduced UX leveling guides for Design and Research. The team overhauled the iOS app adding new features, updated the brand, and launched an Android app.
03
Results
Rebrands rarely impact user adoption significantly, but the results of our brand refresh were staggering. By improving usability and modernizing the app's look and feel, we jumped 60 positions in the App Store without any additional features. Moreover, because we built on iOS native components and aligned to Apple's style guide, Varo was prominently featured in many Apple ads.
04
Recognition
Shortly after launching the updated registration flow, Celent, a global research and advisory firm specializing in financial services, published a report analyzing banking signup experiences. Varo received a 5-star rating, outperforming much larger teams.
05
Recently rebuilt with AI
As a personal project I recently rebuilt the transfer money flow to push my visual craft skills. Over the course of a week, I rebuilt the flow in v0, playing with micro interactions and error states.
06
Micro interactions
At the time, micro-interactions and custom animations were woefully out of scope. It's been exciting to see how much more is possible with AI tooling. In this example, I started with a base set of icons from IconScout, used Manus.ai to extend the set, and used v0 to prototype the "on tap" effects.