Client: RBC Royal Bank (Commercial and Corporate Banking Division)
Role: Senior User Experience Designer
Project Overview
RBC Express is the enterprise digital banking platform used by RBC’s commercial and corporate clients to manage cash flow, payments, and treasury operations across multiple accounts and geographies.
The Dashboard Modernization Project was a strategic initiative to reimagine the platform’s entry point, transforming a static, data-heavy landing page into a personalized, responsive, and actionable experience. The redesign sought to give business users real-time insight, efficiency, and control over their financial activities, regardless of device or location.
The Challenge
Prior to redesign, the RBC Express dashboard presented users with:
- Dense, text-based information requiring deep navigation to find key tasks.
- Limited personalization or prioritization of relevant data.
- Inconsistent design patterns and visual hierarchy across web and tablet experiences.
- Accessibility gaps under WCAG 2.1 standards, particularly for users relying on assistive technologies.
The goal was to deliver a modern, accessible, and data-driven dashboard that served as a true operational control center for RBC’s business clients.
My Role & Contributions
As the lead UX designer, I were responsible for the end-to-end design, from initial research and concept framing through delivery and QA:
- Discovery & Research
- Conducted contextual interviews with business clients, treasury managers, and internal operations teams to identify daily-use patterns and unmet needs.
- Partnered with product owners and analysts to evaluate task frequency, cross-channel workflows, and user priorities.
- Performed competitive benchmarking of commercial banking dashboards (J.P. Morgan, HSBC, Citi) to identify innovation opportunities.
- Experience Strategy & Information Architecture
- Defined a new information hierarchy that surfaced high-value insights (balances, pending approvals, alerts) above the fold.
- Created journey maps and service blueprints linking dashboard interactions to downstream tasks like payments, reporting, and FX transfers.
- Proposed modular, card-based layout systems for scalability across feature releases.
- Interaction Design & Prototyping
- Designed and prototyped responsive dashboard components in Figma and Axure, using progressive disclosure to manage information density.
- Introduced customizable widgets so users could prioritize the data most relevant to their role.
- Developed a visual language for financial alerts, balancing compliance tone with usability clarity.
- Accessibility & Compliance
- Ensured full WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility through clear contrast ratios, ARIA labeling, keyboard navigation, and readable data tables.
- Collaborated with RBC’s accessibility team to test with screen readers and color-blind simulators.
- Collaboration & Agile Delivery
- Worked in close partnership with developers and architects to align designs with technical constraints and performance standards.
- Created annotated specifications and micro-interaction documentation for implementation in RBC’s enterprise design system.
- Participated in sprint reviews, refining design stories in JIRA/Confluence.
Outcomes & Impact
- Reduced task completion time by 30% by surfacing commonly used features directly on the dashboard.
- Increased daily engagement and reduced navigation depth across core workflows.
- Enhanced accessibility compliance, achieving full WCAG 2.1 AA certification for the dashboard interface.
- Established a reusable component library later adopted across other RBC Express modules (Payments, Approvals, FX Integration).
- Contributed to a measurable improvement in client satisfaction and digital adoption metrics.
Reflection
This project demonstrated my ability to translate complex financial data into an intuitive, human-centered experience. By leading research, structure, and design system integration, I helped RBC redefine the dashboard from a static data screen into a strategic command center for business clients, balancing usability, compliance, and insight-driven design.
