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about

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The tool that replaced every brochure in every branch

The right data,
in the wrong language

TThe right data,
in the wrong language

The Customer Engagement Tool (CET) is a digital iPad application that gives Bank of America bankers one guided experience to walk customers through every consumer and business product the bank offers. Built from scratch as the sole designer on a CapTech consulting engagement. Certain details have been kept general to respect client confidentiality.

CLIENT

Bank of America · CapTech Consulting

ROLE

Product Designer

TEAM

1 Researcher, 5 Engineers, 1 PM, BofA Stakeholders

1 Senior Systems Designer, 3 Product Designers,
1 Researcher, 4 Engineers, 1 PM

TOOLS

Figma, Jira, Axe Dev Tools, Copilot, UX Pilot

Figma, Notion, Maze, UserTesting, Jira,
Copilot, UX Pilot

YEAR

2024 - 2026

Business CET - Overview

01 · CONTEXT

Bankers had brochures.
I built what replaced them

When I joined this engagement at CapTech, the CET did not exist. Bank of America bankers were walking into every customer meeting with printed brochures, static, disconnected, and impossible to personalize. My job was to build what replaced them, from the ground up, as the sole designer on the project.

The scope was larger than it first appeared. The CET covered both sides of BofA's retail offering and lived inside a banker-facing Marketing App alongside 13 interactive calculators and a digital handouts library. I owned the English design across all of it: information architecture, UX, UI, content strategy, and component design from day one.

I partnered with a UX researcher who ran and synthesized client interviews. I translated those findings into every major navigation and hierarchy decision. Every screen, every component, every content decision was mine.

System Architecture

02 · CHALLENGE

Designing for two people
in the same seat

The CET was not a banker tool with a customer watching. It was a shared experience where control could pass between them at any point in the conversation. The banker might walk through products and hand the iPad over entirely. The customer might take it, explore on their own, and send a link to themselves to finish at home. Back and forth, depending on where the conversation went.

Designing for that fluidity was the real challenge. The screen had to feel equally navigable for both people. Not optimized for one with the other accommodated. Almost every layout decision I made was an attempt to serve both people at once. The times I got it right were the times I found the intersection between what the banker needed to say and what the customer needed to hear.

Two users. One screen. Either one in control.

03 · THE WORK

Sixteen product areas.
Built to feel like one

The CET is not one product. It is sixteen, built to feel like one. Consumer checking, savings, credit cards, preferred rewards, home loans, and investing on one side. Business banking, preferred rewards for business, credit cards and financing, merchant services, treasury cash management, and Merrill investing on the other. Every section had to hold as a standalone destination a banker could land on mid-conversation, without the customer feeling like they had been dropped somewhere unfamiliar.

The consistency was the job. Same hero structure, same benefit summary pattern, same CTA logic, every time. Bankers move fast in meetings. The tool had to move with them.

Customers could take the iPad, browse independently, and send links to themselves directly from the tool. The experience was designed to move with the conversation, not dictate it. I also designed what nobody plans for. Bankers can fill a cart and hit a limit. A resource preview can fail. A link can be incompatible with iPad. Six error modal states, each resolving in a single tap, because a banker in a live meeting cannot stop to troubleshoot.

Our researcher led 9 sessions with 17 participants across truck fleet managers and Pilot sales reps. One finding reframed everything.

"Real cost savings only occur when drivers adjust their behavior based on these insights. Otherwise all of this is just information sharing."

The design only works if it changes behavior. Fleet managers do not ask "what was my Q3 compliance index?" They ask "where are my drivers fueling, and is that good or bad?" Reorienting the IA around that question was the foundation everything else was built on.

The CET is not one product. It is sixteen, built to feel like one. Consumer checking, savings, credit cards, preferred rewards, home loans, and investing on one side. Business banking, preferred rewards for business, credit cards and financing, merchant services, treasury cash management, and Merrill investing on the other. Every section had to hold as a standalone destination a banker could land on mid-conversation, without the customer feeling like they had been dropped somewhere unfamiliar.

The consistency was the job. Same hero structure, same benefit summary pattern, same CTA logic, every time. Bankers move fast in meetings. The tool had to move with them.

Customers could take the iPad, browse independently, and send links to themselves directly from the tool. The experience was designed to move with the conversation, not dictate it. I also designed what nobody plans for. Bankers can fill a cart and hit a limit. A resource preview can fail. A link can be incompatible with iPad. Six error modal states, each resolving in a single tap, because a banker in a live meeting cannot stop to troubleshoot.

Business Priorities

04 · NAVIGATION DECISION

Customers have goals. Not product preferences

Customers have goals.
Not product preferences

The first version of the Business section navigation was product-led. Business Banking. Credit Cards. Merchant Services. Organized the way BofA organized itself internally. We shipped it. Then the research showed bankers were struggling to use it in real conversations.

One quote from a banker research session stopped the conversation:
"By the time I find the right section, the customer has already lost interest."

That was the problem. The navigation was not just hard to use. It was interrupting the most important moment of the meeting. So I rebuilt the entry point around five customer goals instead of five product categories. The products did not change. The entry point did.

The first version of the Business section navigation was product-led. Business Banking. Credit Cards. Merchant Services. Organized the way BofA organized itself internally. We shipped it. Then the research showed bankers were struggling to use it in real conversations.

One quote from a banker research session stopped the conversation:
"By the time I find the right section, the customer has already lost interest."

That was the problem. The navigation was not just hard to use. It was interrupting the most important moment of the meeting. So I rebuilt the entry point around five customer goals instead of five product categories. The products did not change. The entry point did.

V1: Product-led Navigation

V2: Goal-led Navigation

05 · INSIGHT

The form that was killing conversions

Version 1 of the CET included an account setup flow built directly into the tool. After a banker walked a customer through their options, the next step was right there on the iPad: a form the customer could fill out on the spot to open an account. The logic was sound. Reduce friction at the moment of highest interest and more customers would convert. It was not working.

Three things were telling us the same thing. Drop-off data showed customers starting the form and not finishing it. Bankers were reporting the same thing anecdotally: customers would get to the form, slow down, and leave. And account sign-ups were not increasing despite the tool being in active use.

We went back to the research to understand why. The answer was simple. People do not make financial decisions comfortably under pressure. Sitting across from a banker, in a branch, on someone else's device, with someone watching: that is not the right environment to hand over personal information and commit to a new account. Customers were not saying no to the product. They were saying no to the moment.

The branch is the right place to discover a product. It is not always the right place to commit to one. We removed the in-branch form and replaced it with a single action: a button that sent the customer a link to complete their application at home, on their own device, at their own pace. Account completions increased. The fix was not making the form easier. It was moving the form out of the room entirely, using a capability the tool already had built in.

Three signals pointing to the same problem

Account setup: V1 to V2

The branch is the right place to discover a product.
It is not always the right place to commit to one.

The branch is the right place to discover a product. It is not always the right place to commit to one.

06 · CONSTRAINTS & CRAFT

14 steps between a design change and production

BofA's brand system left almost nothing to interpret. Every color, typeface, and image passed compliance review. The canvas was fixed to iPad with no responsive fallback. Content came through a CMS, so components had to hold at any copy length without intervention.

What made it genuinely hard was the release process. Every design change went through 14 steps before it reached production: timeline, design, development, automated testing, manual ADA testing, code integration, and multiple rounds of stakeholder approval. Getting it wrong meant waiting weeks to fix it. So you learned to get it right the first time.

07 · ACCESSIBILITY

Designed for compliance. Audited to prove it

For a financial institution like Bank of America, WCAG compliance is not optional. It is a legal and regulatory requirement. I built accessibility into every section from day one, not as a final check but as part of how I made decisions throughout.

Every section of the CET had to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA before it could ship. I also authored the formal compliance report delivered directly to Bank of America as a client deliverable, covering all applicable success criteria across automated scanning, keyboard navigation, and screen reader testing on both JAWS and VoiceOver.

The result: zero failures at Level A. Zero failures at Level AA.

For a financial institution like Bank of America, WCAG compliance is not optional. It is a legal and regulatory requirement. I built accessibility into every section from day one, not as a final check but as part of how I made decisions throughout.

Every section of the CET had to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA before it could ship. I also authored the formal compliance report delivered directly to Bank of America as a client deliverable, covering all applicable success criteria across automated scanning, keyboard navigation, and screen reader testing on both JAWS and VoiceOver.

The result: zero failures at Level A. Zero failures at Level AA.

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