Rebuilding Neo by Saudi National Bank

The sprint

We had six weeks to win the work. The task was a proof of concept for a new design of Neo, the digital app of Saudi National Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.

I spent the first week getting the real picture. I met with the CEO to hear his vision, and I read through the app's public reviews to see what users were actually complaining about. At the same time, I brought in two designers to audit the existing app and map its strengths and weak points.

Then we moved fast. We turned the findings into quick ideas and prototypes, and we pushed work to the developers as we went instead of waiting for a perfect end state. We delivered the proof of concept on time.

We didn't pitch a vision. We built one in six weeks and let it speak.

That proof of concept was a big part of why they hired us. More than the screens, the CEO saw a team that was solid and flexible, one that could take his vision and turn it into something built around the user.

Building the team

Winning the work was only the start. Now I needed a team that could rebuild Neo across all its streams.

I hired thirteen designers over four months, split across two tracks. I led the first, a small group building the new design direction and the design system beneath it. The rest kept the live app running and improving in parallel.

Partway through, I brought on a lead designer to own that second track, then onboarded, trained, and mentored him into the role. That freed me to stay on the revamp and the system while the business features had a strong owner of their own.

That design system deserves its own story. It is a bilingual Arabic and English system that lets each screen switch language and direction on its own, and we reused it on later projects. I cover how it works in a separate case study.

A homepage built around widgets

The CEO wanted two things above all: speed and customization. People should reach what they use most in fewer taps, and they should be able to shape the app around their own habits.

So we put a widgets concept at the center, most of all on the homepage. We researched real use cases with the business analysts, tested different approaches, and kept refining until it worked.

A few of the things we added:

• Custom widgets people could place for the flows they use most.
• Widget folders to group and organize them.
• A new header that handled multiple accounts and folded away as someone scrolled to their widgets, giving the content more room.

Before: one fixed homepage, the same layout served to every user from the backend. After: a widgets homepage each person arranges themselves, with custom widgets, folders, and a header that folds away on scroll.

The old homepage gave everyone the same fixed layout. The new one lets each person build a faster, more personal starting point. We carried that same thinking into the wider revamp.

Where it stands

The widgets homepage is live in production, and the rest of the revamp continued into development.

The CEO was a hard sign-off. He questioned everything and made you earn every screen before it went anywhere near production.

Getting this CEO to sign off on production was never a small thing.

When I moved on from the project, I handed the whole team to the lead designer I had trained, and he has kept it running strong since. The work shipped past a tough client, and the team I built carried on without missing a step.