Designing Clarity: Personas and Product Strategy for Consumer Banking
This case study is an overview of the user research I helped lead to improve nCino’s loan origination experience for in-branch bankers.
In 2024, our Consumer design team—three product designers and our manager—set out to understand the daily realities of in-branch bankers using nCino’s Loan Origination System (LOS). Our software supports bankers through the entire loan process—from capturing customer information and verifying documents to structuring products and booking loans. We focused on uncovering what was slowing them down, where communication was breaking down, and how we could improve their experience through smarter, more empathetic design.
Over several months, we conducted 34 in-depth interviews and manually tagged over 1,400 qualitative observations. What began as a focused research effort evolved into cross-org persona alignment, strategic feature proposals, and critical momentum for a future-facing, AI-powered product vision.
I contributed to every aspect of the research process and led point on synthesizing insights, authoring the final report, and presenting our findings to stakeholders across the organization.
.
TLDR
Partnered with a small design team to conduct 34 banker interviews and manually tag over 1,400 qualitative observations, uncovering key inefficiencies in collaboration, training, and system integration.
Developed four intent-based personas to represent key user motivations and behaviors
Proposed feature concepts to improve clarity, reduce rework, and support accuracy
Led insight development, wrote research report, and presented findings across the org
Research influenced cross-functional alignment on personas and facilitated momentum toward an AI-first product vision
Our Team
Our Research Goals
Understand the workflows, frustrations, and collaboration dynamics across key banking roles
Define user personas based on intent and motivation—not just job title
Identify systemic inefficiencies and gaps in the loan origination experience
Recommend actionable features and KPIs rooted in real user needs
Systems audit
Irrelevant buttons
Badges that no one used
Tables with broken links
Blank objects
Approach and Participant Overview
To build a complete picture of the loan origination journey, we spoke with 34 employees across the banking ecosystem—including relationship managers, loan officers, processors, underwriters, and other specialized roles we hadn’t encountered before.
Some worked in small-town branches where they knew every customer by name. Others were buried in high-volume, high-pressure queues in corporate settings. Our participants ranged from a few months of experience to over two decades in the field.
Using a semi-structured script of 25 open-ended questions, we explored their top tasks, pain points, tech stacks, collaboration routines, and visions for a better workflow. These conversations revealed deeper issues than just tool friction—they illuminated fragmented communication, unclear accountability, and mounting pressure to move faster with less support.
Collaborative Analysis and Thematic Synthesis
Following the interviews, we hosted a three-day design workshop to synthesize what we had learned. Using Dovetail AI, we clustered our 1,400+ tagged quotes into themes around user motivations, challenges, and opportunities.
On the final day, we created a journey map across every loan product our company supports—revealing that the loan lifecycle is less about individual roles and more about recurring behaviors and tasks. This became the foundation for our intent-based personas.
Intent-Based Personas
Instead of anchoring personas to job titles, we defined them around motivations, behaviors, and challenges that consistently showed up across roles. These personas reflect the real people we spoke to—and the tasks required to move loans from start to finish.
The Initiator
Initiators are the customer’s first point of contact. They identify needs, guide onboarding, and often juggle multiple responsibilities. They're motivated by building trust and helping clients make smart financial decisions.
.
The Verifier
Verifiers are the gatekeepers for loan approval. They make sure each request is accurate and error free, and define what is needed to get the loan approved. They focus on accuracy and compliance, and work independently to solve complex issues and push tough loans across the finish line.
.
The Facilitator
Facilitators coordinate across roles, acting as a bridge between the customer and the bank. They gather documents, and ensure things keep moving. They thrive on variety, organization, and keeping the process smooth.
.
The Maintainer
Maintainers handle account updates, backend cleanup, and cross-selling. They’re driven by structure, consistency, and getting things right the first time.
.
Digging Deeper: From Patterns to Priorities
Once we defined these personas, we examined how they interacted with each other—and where things tended to break down. Our goal was to identify issues with the broadest cross-role impact and focus on solutions that could unlock efficiency at scale.
We asked ourselves: What pain points ripple through the entire system? Where can design have the greatest reach across roles and workflows?
That framing led us to three core themes—each pointing to deeper structural issues in the loan origination process.
.
Key Observations
Theme 1: Bankers Are Struggling with Time and Tools
Most bankers were overwhelmed—juggling nonstop tasks, jumping between systems, and losing time to fragmented communication. Burnout was common.
Theme 2: Collaboration and Ownership Are Unclear
Hand-offs were messy and undefined. Without a shared source of truth, work was duplicated or dropped, and no one knew who owned what.
Theme 3: Training and Knowledge Gaps Slow Everyone Down
New hires were left to figure things out alone, and even experienced employees lacked clear guidance. Small mistakes often snowballed into major delays.
My Role: Bringing the Story Into Focus
We surfaced hundreds of tagged quotes and behavioral patterns—but the full story hadn’t yet emerged. At the time, Dovetail AI was just beginning to take shape as a powerful AI research tool. I started scouring the depths of everything we'd done thus far.
I returned to the data, re-read interviews, and reexamined our personas to draw out the broader narrative. Slowly but surely, the underlying story of our bankers began to emerge.
.
Key Insights
Speed Over Accuracy Is Creating Risk
Bankers are pressured to move fast—but without the tools or training to do it right. Rushed files lead to rework, delays, and a vicious cycle of pressure.
Poor Handoffs Shift the Burden Downstream
Incomplete loan files pass from sales-facing roles to underwriters, who then spend time fixing errors or chasing missing information.
Processors Absorb the Fallout
Processors become the glue—clarifying statuses, managing expectations, and cleaning up mistakes—slowing fulfillment and degrading customer experience.
Role Misalignment and Distrust Cause Delays
Teams brace for failure rather than trust collaboration. Silos, poor tools, and unclear policies make cooperation harder than it needs to be.
.
Turning Insights Into Solution Proposals
I translated these insights into four strategic product proposals to support clarity, reduce mental load, and prevent errors before they start.
Role-Based Dashboards
A focused interface that surfaces only the most relevant tasks and data for each role.
Centralized Communication Hub
A single source of truth for task updates, messages, and progress tracking.
Real-Time Error Prevention
Smart validations and pre-checks to catch issues at the point of entry.
Context-Aware Guidance
Built-in support and prompts tailored to risky or unfamiliar workflows. Especially useful for onboarding.
.
Validating Design Concepts Already Gaining Traction
The Centralized Communication Hub feature proposal validated a concept already being designed and tested by our Consumer team.
This “Loan Hub” performed well in usability testing with bankers, and quickly advanced to leadership review. It was placed on the roadmap for a future overhaul of our legacy underwriting experience.
.
Defining Success: Metrics That Matter
To measure the value of these solutions, we proposed tracking KPIs directly tied to user pain points:
Loan Processing Time: Time from initiation to approval, and per-step breakdown
Error Rates: Frequency, type, and cost of corrections
Collaboration Response Time: Delays from unclear ownership or handoffs
User Satisfaction: NPS, CSAT, and feature-specific feedback
.
What Happened Next…
I authored the research report in Dovetail and presented on the work to several audiences—including Consumer PMs and our global design team.
After presenting our findings, our persona work was used as a catalyst for cross-org alignment. We standardized personas across business lines and partnered with our Mortgage to adopt their work around a customer persona. Together, we hosted collaborative working sessions to refine them.
.
Our Jam sesh across consumer, small business, commercial and mortgage teams to align on personas.
These personas became the foundation for a company-wide design summit, where over 30 designers collaborated on AI-first concepts tailored to each user type. Ideas ranged from role-specific dashboards to AI-powered document agents and automated verification workflows.
This research played a critical role in aligning teams around a common language and strategic vision—directly influencing how the organization approached AI integration at a key inflection point in product planning. It gave leadership and cross-functional teams a shared framework to imagine bold, future-facing solutions with clarity and confidence.
.
Bridging Role-Based and Intent-Based Thinking
When PMs brought Claude-generated personas into the fold, I helped clarify the distinction between role-based needs and foundational, intent-based personas—and how they each serve different stages of design.
My favorite success for this project was really seeing first hand the excitement users felt for the new Salesforce view!
After reviewing several of the PDFs Sophie shared, I mapped her role-based personas—like Branch Banker Betty and Processor Patricia—back to the foundational intent-based personas we had developed.
Betty? She aligned with The Initiator.
Patricia? A clear Facilitator.
Some of her personas were combinations, which gave us a great opportunity to talk about why we took an intent-based approach in the first place.
In banking, the number of unique roles is massive—and differs by product and institution. If we created a persona for each one, we’d quickly end up with dozens per business unit. That’s why we designed broader, behavior-based personas: to serve as foundational anchors, while allowing teams to layer on product- or role-specific detail as needed.
Sophie and I aligned on a shared strategy:
She would continue using her personas to describe product-specific needs, but we’d map them to the higher-level intent-based personas for consistency across teams.
My favorite success for this project was really seeing first hand the excitement users felt for the new Salesforce view!
What I Learned
Research takes a village
With no dedicated researcher, we split the work. We supported each other across PTO gaps, heavy loads, and shifting priorities—and got it done together.
Design can still feel intimate and alive
Our journey-mapping workshops were a return to form. Sticky notes. Whiteboards. Laughter. We felt like designers again—close to the work, close to our users.
My favorite success for this project was really seeing first hand the excitement users felt for the new Salesforce view!
My team-mate Rachel experiencing a bit of sticky-ception. :)
We had so much fun living in the tangible world for this design project.
Our team collectively burst into laughter when Rachel said enthusiastically during our workshop, "I just LOVE havi
ng a sticky in my hands."
Insights don’t announce themselves
They emerge from immersion—from reading transcripts twice, from re-tagging moments others missed, from holding the forest and the trees in mind at once.
Buy-in matters
I shared this work again and again, tailoring each version to its audience. That consistency built trust, inspired momentum, and helped carry the work forward.
My favorite success for this project was really seeing first hand the excitement users felt for the new Salesforce view!
The Beginning of a Bigger Story
This project was a turning point in how our team approached product design—from reactive problem-solving to insight-driven strategy. By staying close to users and aligning teams around shared personas and system-level breakdowns, we laid the foundation for deeper, more meaningful product decisions.
The work didn’t end here. These insights directly informed our next initiative: an end-to-end product vision for consumer banking at nCino—where we reimagined the entire origination experience through the lens of clarity, flexibility, and AI-assisted workflows.
Designing Clarity: Personas and Product Strategy for Consumer Banking
This case study is an overview of the user research I helped lead to improve nCino’s loan origination experience for in-branch bankers.
In 2024, our Consumer design team—three product designers and our manager—set out to understand the daily realities of in-branch bankers using nCino’s Loan Origination System (LOS). Our software supports bankers through the entire loan process—from capturing customer information and verifying documents to structuring products and booking loans. We focused on uncovering what was slowing them down, where communication was breaking down, and how we could improve their experience through smarter, more empathetic design.
Over several months, we conducted 34 in-depth interviews and manually tagged over 1,400 qualitative observations. What began as a focused research effort evolved into cross-org persona alignment, strategic feature proposals, and critical momentum for a future-facing, AI-powered product vision.
I contributed to every aspect of the research process and led point on synthesizing insights, authoring the final report, and presenting our findings to stakeholders across the organization.
TLDR
Partnered with a small design team to conduct 34 banker interviews and manually tag over 1,400 qualitative observations, uncovering key inefficiencies in collaboration, training, and system integration.
Developed four intent-based personas to represent key user motivations and behaviors
Proposed feature concepts to improve clarity, reduce rework, and support accuracy
Led insight development, wrote research report, and presented findings across the org
Research influenced cross-functional alignment on personas and facilitated momentum toward an AI-first product vision
Our Team
Our Research Goals
Understand the workflows, frustrations, and collaboration dynamics across key banking roles
Define user personas based on intent and motivation—not just job title
Identify systemic inefficiencies and gaps in the loan origination experience
Recommend actionable features and KPIs rooted in real user needs
Systems audit
Irrelevant buttons
Badges that no one used
Tables with broken links
Blank objects
Approach and Participant Overview
To build a complete picture of the loan origination journey, we spoke with 34 employees across the banking ecosystem—including relationship managers, loan officers, processors, underwriters, and other specialized roles we hadn’t encountered before.
Some worked in small-town branches where they knew every customer by name. Others were buried in high-volume, high-pressure queues in corporate settings. Our participants ranged from a few months of experience to over two decades in the field.
Using a semi-structured script of 25 open-ended questions, we explored their top tasks, pain points, tech stacks, collaboration routines, and visions for a better workflow. These conversations revealed deeper issues than just tool friction—they illuminated fragmented communication, unclear accountability, and mounting pressure to move faster with less support.
Collaborative Analysis and Thematic Synthesis
Following the interviews, we hosted a three-day design workshop to synthesize what we had learned. Using Dovetail AI, we clustered our 1,400+ tagged quotes into themes around user motivations, challenges, and opportunities.
On the final day, we created a journey map across every loan product our company supports—revealing that the loan lifecycle is less about individual roles and more about recurring behaviors and tasks. This became the foundation for our intent-based personas.
Intent-Based Personas
Instead of anchoring personas to job titles, we defined them around motivations, behaviors, and challenges that consistently showed up across roles. These personas reflect the real people we spoke to—and the tasks required to move loans from start to finish.
The Initiator
Initiators are the customer’s first point of contact. They identify needs, guide onboarding, and often juggle multiple responsibilities. They're motivated by building trust and helping clients make smart financial decisions.
The Verifier
Verifiers are the gatekeepers for loan approval. They make sure each request is accurate and error free, and define what is needed to get the loan approved. They focus on accuracy and compliance, and work independently to solve complex issues and push tough loans across the finish line.
The Facilitator
Facilitators coordinate across roles, acting as a bridge between the customer and the bank. They gather documents, and ensure things keep moving. They thrive on variety, organization, and keeping the process smooth.
The Maintainer
Maintainers handle account updates, backend cleanup, and cross-selling. They’re driven by structure, consistency, and getting things right the first time.
Digging Deeper: From Patterns to Priorities
Once we defined these personas, we examined how they interacted with each other—and where things tended to break down. Our goal was to identify issues with the broadest cross-role impact and focus on solutions that could unlock efficiency at scale.
We asked ourselves: What pain points ripple through the entire system? Where can design have the greatest reach across roles and workflows?
That framing led us to three core themes—each pointing to deeper structural issues in the loan origination process.
Key Observations
Theme 1: Bankers Are Struggling with Time and Tools
Most bankers were overwhelmed—juggling nonstop tasks, jumping between systems, and losing time to fragmented communication. Burnout was common.
Theme 2: Collaboration and Ownership Are Unclear
Hand-offs were messy and undefined. Without a shared source of truth, work was duplicated or dropped, and no one knew who owned what.
Theme 3: Training and Knowledge Gaps Slow Everyone Down
New hires were left to figure things out alone, and even experienced employees lacked clear guidance. Small mistakes often snowballed into major delays.
My Role: Bringing the Story Into Focus
We surfaced hundreds of tagged quotes and behavioral patterns—but the full story hadn’t yet emerged. At the time, Dovetail AI was just beginning to take shape as a powerful AI research tool. I started scouring the depths of everything we'd done thus far.
I returned to the data, re-read interviews, and reexamined our personas to draw out the broader narrative. Slowly but surely, the underlying story of our bankers began to emerge.
Key Insights
Speed Over Accuracy Is Creating Risk
Bankers are pressured to move fast—but without the tools or training to do it right. Rushed files lead to rework, delays, and a vicious cycle of pressure.
Poor Handoffs Shift the Burden Downstream
Incomplete loan files pass from sales-facing roles to underwriters, who then spend time fixing errors or chasing missing information.
Processors Absorb the Fallout
Processors become the glue—clarifying statuses, managing expectations, and cleaning up mistakes—slowing fulfillment and degrading customer experience.
Role Misalignment and Distrust Cause Delays
Teams brace for failure rather than trust collaboration. Silos, poor tools, and unclear policies make cooperation harder than it needs to be.
Turning Insights Into Solution Proposals
I translated these insights into four strategic product proposals to support clarity, reduce mental load, and prevent errors before they start.
Role-Based Dashboards
A focused interface that surfaces only the most relevant tasks and data for each role.
Centralized Communication Hub
A single source of truth for task updates, messages, and progress tracking.
Real-Time Error Prevention
Smart validations and pre-checks to catch issues at the point of entry.
Context-Aware Guidance
Built-in support and prompts tailored to risky or unfamiliar workflows. Especially useful for onboarding.
Validating Design Concepts Already Gaining Traction
The Centralized Communication Hub feature proposal validated a concept already being designed and tested by our Consumer team.
This “Loan Hub” performed well in usability testing with bankers, and quickly advanced to leadership review. It was placed on the roadmap for a future overhaul of our legacy underwriting experience.
Defining Success: Metrics That Matter
To measure the value of these solutions, we proposed tracking KPIs directly tied to user pain points:
Loan Processing Time: Time from initiation to approval, and per-step breakdown
Error Rates: Frequency, type, and cost of corrections
Collaboration Response Time: Delays from unclear ownership or handoffs
User Satisfaction: NPS, CSAT, and feature-specific feedback
What Happened Next…
I authored the research report in Dovetail and presented on the work to several audiences—including Consumer PMs and our global design team.
After presenting our findings, our persona work was used as a catalyst for cross-org alignment. We standardized personas across business lines and partnered with our Mortgage to adopt their work around a customer persona. Together, we hosted collaborative working sessions to refine them.
Our Jam sesh across consumer, small business, commercial and mortgage teams to align on personas.
These personas became the foundation for a company-wide design summit, where over 30 designers collaborated on AI-first concepts tailored to each user type. Ideas ranged from role-specific dashboards to AI-powered document agents and automated verification workflows.
This research played a critical role in aligning teams around a common language and strategic vision—directly influencing how the organization approached AI integration at a key inflection point in product planning. It gave leadership and cross-functional teams a shared framework to imagine bold, future-facing solutions with clarity and confidence.
Bridging Role-Based and Intent-Based Thinking
When PMs brought Claude-generated personas into the fold, I helped clarify the distinction between role-based needs and foundational, intent-based personas—and how they each serve different stages of design.
After reviewing several of the PDFs Sophie shared, I mapped her role-based personas—like Branch Banker Betty and Processor Patricia—back to the foundational intent-based personas we had developed.
Betty? She aligned with The Initiator.
Patricia? A clear Facilitator.
Some of her personas were combinations, which gave us a great opportunity to talk about why we took an intent-based approach in the first place.
In banking, the number of unique roles is massive—and differs by product and institution. If we created a persona for each one, we’d quickly end up with dozens per business unit. That’s why we designed broader, behavior-based personas: to serve as foundational anchors, while allowing teams to layer on product- or role-specific detail as needed.
Sophie and I aligned on a shared strategy:
She would continue using her personas to describe product-specific needs, but we’d map them to the higher-level intent-based personas for consistency across teams.
What I Learned
Research takes a village
With no dedicated researcher, we split the work. We supported each other across PTO gaps, heavy loads, and shifting priorities—and got it done together.
Design can still feel intimate and alive
Our journey-mapping workshops were a return to form. Sticky notes. Whiteboards. Laughter. We felt like designers again—close to the work, close to our users.
Insights don’t announce themselves
They emerge from immersion—from reading transcripts twice, from re-tagging moments others missed, from holding the forest and the trees in mind at once.
Buy-in matters
I shared this work again and again, tailoring each version to its audience. That consistency built trust, inspired momentum, and helped carry the work forward.
The Beginning of a Bigger Story
This project was a turning point in how our team approached product design—from reactive problem-solving to insight-driven strategy. By staying close to users and aligning teams around shared personas and system-level breakdowns, we laid the foundation for deeper, more meaningful product decisions.
The work didn’t end here. These insights directly informed our next initiative: an end-to-end product vision for consumer banking at nCino—where we reimagined the entire origination experience through the lens of clarity, flexibility, and AI-assisted workflows.