Case study
North Star was a complete redesign of the entire banking application. On the Sprint 0 team, we conduct a few different types of sprints — Tactical (short-term, delivery-focused), LiveLabs (rapid development), and Concept (long-term, future vision).
North Star was our biggest Conceptual Sprint undertaking to date, with an ambitious focus on a future vision across three strategic pillars:
The goal with North Star was to imagine a best-in-class version of our banking app, without an emphasis on our current-state technical limitations. What would you do if you had the chance to do it all your way? We got to find out.
The existing banking app was dated and utility-focused: a place people went only for necessary transactions, not for value-added features. Meanwhile, overseas competitors were already shipping open banking, smart automation, and personalized insights.
The brief wasn’t to triage drop-offs or ticket hotspots. It was to paint a bold vision: what a future-ready mobile banking experience could look like over the next 5–8 years if vendor partnerships were on the table and compliance could collaborate early. The output needed to be a North Star roadmap that product and engineering could incrementally build toward.
We tested whether the new features felt useful, intuitive, and would make people check the app proactively or return more often.
All about proactive advice, relevant and personalized to you, delivered when you need it most.
Taking discoverability, onboarding, and rewards + incentives to the next level of user value.
Allowing users to more easily self-serve, making previously tricky tasks simpler than ever.
As a Concept Sprint team, success meant user buy-in, perceived value, and clear return intent for personalized, evolving features.
We facilitated multi-disciplinary workshops with Design, Product Strategy, Research, and Delivery teams to define pillar scope, success metrics, and which overseas innovations to adapt.
Alignment on pillars, scope, and measurable success.
Wireframes for happy paths, then high-fidelity interactive prototypes for moderated sessions.
Matured concepts into robust features: personalization, open banking, automation, smart alerts, categorization, custom cards.
Animated highlight reels per pillar + a design handoff repository to guide 5–8 years of delivery.
There were a few pivotal discoveries we made along the way with user validation that steered our vision towards success.
Why: Our personalization tools and recommendations are only as good as our data.
Validation: Clients informed us in testing that without meaningfully putting together the entire picture of their finances, there would be experience gaps and poor personalization.
Why: Clients want recommendations and tools that benefit them, not get in their way.
Validation: Overly sales-oriented suggestions were seen as more beneficial for the business, whereas users expected truly curated value based on their banking activities.
Why: Clients typically sign on to complete transactional tasks, not explore.
Validation: If we offer meaningful Insights into their spending habits, summaries with valuable information, all at a regular cadence, clients are more likely to return.
While there were tons of cool features we presented, here's a couple highlights that users really resonated with, and wanted to see in the future.
Year-in-Review: Highlighting the big wins and changes of users' overall finances in an engaging and interactive animation that can be shared.
Split Savings Goals: A way to easily contribute to a shared goal with family and friends, making it easier than ever to save together.
Some of these North Star designs are currently being explored in Delivery pods, while others serve as inspiration for the future of banking at CIBC.
Product work is a team sport.
Design Sim Purba & Zoe Petropolous | Strategy Justin M. & Emma J. | Research Sara S.