First Merchants Bank
End-to-end UX across digital banking — from research and stakeholder alignment to account creation, banker-facing tools, and a full platform redesign.
Role: Principal UX Designer
Year: 2022-2025
Product Types: Consumer and commercial digital, internal banker tools, marketing & email
The Scope
First Merchants is a regional bank operating across multiple states. The UX work spanned the full digital ecosystem — public-facing web, mobile app, and internal banker tools — requiring alignment across compliance, engineering, marketing, and branch operations.
Understanding the Landscape
As part of a small team of UX professionals, I conducted stakeholder interviews, audits, and synthesized findings across departments to map competing priorities and uncover shared user needs.
We dedicated multiple sessions to design workshops with executive leaders, aiming to not only understand their perspectives on solving our big problems but also to impart the principles of design thinking through active engagement. The success of these sessions is evident in executives actively seeking similar workshops for addressing other issues afterward.
Defining How UX Operates
Part of my focus was on seamlessly integrating UX principles into the organization and driving maturity. For example, mapping the omnichannel onboarding experience across web, mobile, and in-branch. Another main goal was establishing how UX decisions in one channel affect others — and built a shared framework the team could work from.
Visualizations played a key role in this process, serving as tools to convey the rationale of UX thinking and decision making. These visual aids not only promote understanding within teams but also stand as enduring resources for others seeking a quick grasp of UX essentials.
The above image is based of Nielson Norman group’s established stages, and was used for educational purposes at First Merchants Bank.
The process and activities that accompany the Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) process
Redesigning Account Opening
The account creation flow was a primary acquisition touchpoint — and a significant source of drop-off. The work involved mapping the full user journey, identifying friction points, and redesigning the flow to reduce cognitive load at key decision moments.
Banker Facing Tools
Tellers and relationship managers work under real pressure — customers present and waiting patiently, compliance non-negotiable, time strained. Years of workarounds had become muscle memory. The design challenge wasn't just revamping the interface, it was re-engaging people with frustrations they'd learned to live with, rebuilding trust in the tools, and delivering something they'd actually use.
Platform Redesign
The full redesign was initiated and led during my tenure — spanning research, information architecture, design system foundations, and core flow redesigns. I collaborated directly with leadership on requirements and design direction, and partnered with marketing to ensure visual consistency held up against usability standards.
Impact
During my tenure, digital enrollment success increased by over 30%. But the more lasting contribution was organizational. The goal of my team was to take a company with an underdeveloped design practice and build the foundation for it to grow.
We established processes, earned cross-functional trust, and created a framework for UX to operate and mature within the organization. The groundwork was laid, and the work continues.