SELECTED WORK · FINANCIAL SERVICES
TL;DR
A realistic look at my first professional design role
01
THE TRUTH — At CIBC, I was a UI Designer in my first professional role. UX inside a major bank has a particular shape: established systems, many stakeholders, tight timelines, and decisions that extend far beyond one designer. I won’t pretend I was leading product strategy at a major bank. I was learning how to do strong, conversion-focused work within a complex organization, and shipping a lot of it.
ROLE
UI Designer
TEAM
CIBC + Simplii Digital
PLATFORM
Adobe Experience Manager
FOCUS
Product pages + conversion
01 · CONTEXT
CIBC is one of Canada’s top 5 banks, while Simplii Financial is its digital-first direct banking subsidiary. Both brands were supported by the same digital team, so my tickets could come through for either one. The brands were already highly established; the work was about applying their systems clearly and consistently, not reinventing them.
02 · WHAT I SHIPPED
I designed new product and campaign pages across both brands, including estate-planning work for CIBC and Simplii, a new Simplii student-banking page, and a new Simplii USD account page. I also updated credit-card pages frequently as new products, offers, and features launched.
SIMPLII · STUDENT BANKING
The primary goal was always to make the product easy to understand, and easy to apply for. The hero paired audience-specific imagery with a concise description and an immediate CTA, so customers did not have to search for the next step. Conversion was key.
That same clarity mattered below the hero. The signup content evolved from a dense three-step explanation into a more scannable, task-based pattern, tabs separated signing up from setting up a card, while numbered steps made the path easier to understand at a glance. Conversion was the throughline: every part of the page, not just the hero, needed to get someone from “interested” to “applied” with as little friction as possible.
03 · CONSTRAINTS
Time was the most consistent tension. Launch dates and product details were often finalized late, while every page still needed review from product, brand, legal, and compliance before release. Copy usually arrived from partner teams, and Adobe Experience Manager limited the layouts and interactions available to us. My job was to prioritize the clearest conversion path inside those constraints.
04 · IMAGERY
Image sourcing was a substantial part of the work. Photography needed to feel credible for each audience: younger customers for student banking, older customers for estate planning, and younger dual-income households for many credit-card products. Stakeholder reviews sometimes created difficult conversations about who should be represented, especially in wealth-focused work, so I advocated for imagery that reflected the customers the products were meant to serve, while maintaining the diversity that’s inherent to the customers we’re serving.
05 · OUTCOMES + LEARNING
The work resulted in new customer-facing product pages across CIBC and Simplii, alongside frequent updates to existing credit-card experiences as products and features evolved. More importantly, the role taught me how to truly prioritize conversion: clarify the offer, surface the primary action early, and make every section help customers move confidently toward applying. It also strengthened my ability to identify what mattered most and ship practical design decisions quickly.