Jenius Bank: Web Design Lead
Led the 0→1 build of a mobile-first, responsive React platform serving 250K+ customers. Defined design systems, cross-team alignment, and end-to-end UX for enterprise-level banking experiences.
Contents
Jenius Bank's Mobile-first Dashboard and "Evolved"/PFM Tools
Product & Business Objective
Jenius Bank was a B2C digital division startup under SMBC that offered personal loans, HYSAs, and holistic personal financial management tools. Jenius Bank's web platform is a mobile-first, responsive React application built to replace a third-party vendor solution that initially enabled speed to market. The strategic shift to an internally owned platform gave us full control over data, architecture, and experience—unlocking the ability to deliver a more cohesive, scalable, and customer-centric product with fewer external constraints.
Jenius Bank Web App: Before (left) vs After (right)
Organizational Scope
This was a highly visible, enterprise-level initiative spanning Product (Deposits, Loans, Technical PMs), Program Management, Engineering (architecture, middleware, front-end), Data, Legal, Risk, Compliance, InfoSec, and Design. The core web team included 30+ engineers, 5+ PMs, and 2 designers (including myself) working across multiple time zones in a remote setting.
Key Business and User Wins
The bank reached 1 billion dollars in HYSA deposits under a year of its July 2023 launch. Deposits soon grew to 2 billion by early 2026.
Since the bank's launch, we had 70,000+ successful transfers and payments. Web money movement experiences were rated 4.8/5 as of 2026.
Across 12,000+ users, we had more than 38,000 accounts linked for our "Evolved"/PFM experience, giving users a holistic financial picture.
Customers with linked accounts had a total net worth of more than $1.88 billion tracked across various institutions via our PFM tools.
Jenius Bank Dashboard Designs
Ownership & Leadership
As lead designer for the year-long 0→1 build, I partnered closely with one additional designer in a mentor-mentee model while embedded across cross-functional pods. Beyond driving end-to-end UX and UI, I helped define ways of working for a fast-moving, parallelized build—including design system foundations, roadmap dependencies, and cross-team alignment.
My Prioritized Ways of Working
Role & Impact
Over 3+ years at Jenius Bank, I led the evolution of the web experience from foundational architecture to scaled customer journeys. The work below represents designs I created in close partnership with product, engineering, and design collaborators. Some of my achievements and responsibilities can be found on my résumé here.
User Research
User research is a core part of my design process—whether if it's a small preference test like the content example below where we're getting impressions on different copy and understanding user expectations to bigger research efforts like a usability test on a hi-fidelity prototype. Core discovery work sometimes includes user/stakeholder interviews, journey mapping to understand workflows and identify pain points across multiple user groups or customer segments, surveys, competitor research to assess the market and trends, and others.
Design System - Forje
I created, governed, and maintained Jenius Bank's Figma web design system (Forje) from early 2024. Our team (primarily myself and one other designer) established foundational components, tokens, and accessibility standards that powered the entire web platform. Our engineering counterpart was in Storybook.
Integration Strategy
Peek into some of the supporting visuals it takes to get alignment and buy-in from a variety of stakeholders for a multi-year planned integration project.
"Evolved" Designs
Beyond the core dashboard, we designed a suite of "Evolved" PFM (Personal Finance Management) tools that included net worth tracking, credit score monitoring, insights feed, and spend tracking. These gave customers a holistic view of their financial health.
Jenius View (net worth, insights, spending) and Credit Summary—part of the "Evolved" PFM suite.
Accessibility
We were truly committed to creating accessible experiences at Jenius Bank. In our design work we aimed to meet the WCAG 2.2 standard on both the AA and AAA level. Below is an example of design-documented reading order, aria labels, landmarks, titles/headers, and button markers for our development team.
User Journeys, Flows, and Prototypes
Prototypes of various flows and journeys (e.g. happy paths, edge cases, first-time user experiences) are a great way to share more realistic visuals and emulate a user's experience for stakeholders and myself.
Dashboard, Account Summary, and Authentication (Log In, Multi-factor Authentication, Forgot Password / User ID, Create Credential) screens with various scenarios, flows, and prototypes in Figma created by me.
Sarah N.
VP Product Manager, Jenius Bank
Yuan is the most talented and collaborative designer I've had the privilege of working with. Over the past 3+ years at Jenius Bank (SMBC's U.S. digital bank), Yuan and I worked very closely as we built and launched our Personal Finance Management (PFM) and open banking features from discovery to production, navigating complex technical integrations, regulatory constraints, and user needs every step of the way. Yuan led the design for critical user flows including external account linking, net worth and cashflow/subscription tracking, first-time user experience, accounts lists and details views, info architecture, and full accessibility compliance. She consistently delivered intuitive, elegant solutions, balancing innovation with usability.
Yuan's proactive collaboration with our research team was paramount as she championed and helped execute quantitative and qualitative research that informed our strategy. What sets Yuan apart is her exceptional empathy for users, unique ability to spot subtle edge cases or unmet needs early, and knack for proposing creative and thoughtful alternatives.
As a collaborator, Yuan is sharp, articulate, kind, and thoughtful, making every workshop, critique, or shared doc noticeably better just by being in it. Yuan is an outstanding design leader and any forward-thinking team in fintech or beyond would be incredibly fortunate to bring her on board! I would work with Yuan again without hesitation.
Alejandro S.
Senior UX/UI Marketing Designer, Jenius Bank
In my four years at Jenius Bank, Yuan stood out as one of the most meticulous and talented designers I've worked with. Her mastery of Figma and her ability to navigate complex design systems is second to none. Yuan's work on the digital bank's authenticated space was a masterclass in design execution, leading to her well-earned promotion to VP. She is highly respected for her craft and her leadership, and she consistently inspires those around her to do their best work.
Andrew P.
Senior Software Engineer, Jenius Bank
Yuan is an extraordinary designer who truly understands the synergy between design and development. During our time at Jenius Bank, she produced stunning, 'work-of-art' designs that were as functional as they were beautiful. What makes Yuan stand out is her complete lack of ego; she was always willing to iterate on her designs to optimize for development without compromising the user experience. Her agility is unmatched—she would often listen to engineering feedback during a meeting and present a modified, pixel-perfect solution before the call even ended.
