Cross-platform parity
One interaction model across iOS, Android, and Web, structurally unified without flattening what each surface does best.
This was a saving goals feature. Underneath it was a question about whether financial software could hold someone's aspiration without judging them when they missed it.
01
Saving Goals is a core feature inside George, Erste Bank's mobile and web banking platform used by 19M+ customers across CEE. The brief was to redesign the feature end to end (goal creation, progress tracking, and savings management) so it worked at scale across iOS, Android, and Web, and across six markets with different savings behaviours and expectations.
02
The existing feature was powerful but heavy. It had accreted complexity over years of incremental additions, and completion was weak, especially on mobile, where most goals were set. The challenge was not simplification for its own sake. It was rebuilding a system that could hold the emotional weight of "I want to save for something" without adding the cognitive weight of financial setup. And it had to do that inside a regulated banking platform, across three surfaces, and within tight localisation constraints.
03
Lead Product Designer on a team of one PM with embedded UX research and four engineers across iOS, Android, and Web. I owned the feature framing and the cross-platform system, aligned three platform leads on a single interaction model, and drove the research synthesis into decisions the teams could ship. My job was to make the experience feel like one product without flattening what each surface does well.
04
The goal flow was rebuilt around intent first, numbers second: users named what they wanted before the system asked how much or when. Progress was designed as a living object rather than a percentage, showing real contributions over time so the emotional payoff wasn't tied to hitting 100%. Goal management was separated from goal creation so returning users weren't dragged back through setup. Cross-platform parity was enforced on structure, not appearance: each platform kept its native interaction logic but hit the same milestones in the same order.
05
The redesign shipped across iOS, Android, and Web as a unified system. Three qualitative outcomes stood out.
One interaction model across iOS, Android, and Web, structurally unified without flattening what each surface does best.
Goal creation condensed without losing depth, helping more users get past the initial flow and into ongoing use.
The system held up across six markets with distinct savings attitudes, regulatory copy, and localised tone.
06
The most valuable insight was that users don't abandon saving goals because setting them is hard. They abandon them because the system stops feeling like theirs once it's running. Rebuilding the progress and management layers mattered more than polishing the entry flow.
Looking back, I would push harder on the emotional framing earlier: the language and tone around unfinished goals was where the quietest gains lived, and it tends to be the first thing to get cut under delivery pressure.