Not just a banking app: a smarter way for Lebanon to bank.
A redesign of BLF Bank’s mobile banking app for customers in Lebanon, rebuilding trust through clear confirmation moments, navigation shaped around how people actually bank, and onboarding that removes hesitation from the very first screen.
Discover
Understanding the problem space and aligning early direction
Before engaging with users, we explored the broader context of the challenge to align stakeholders and define a clear starting point. This phase focused on understanding business goals, constraints and existing knowledge, while identifying early risks and opportunities.
Trust gap
Users didn’t trust the app to complete transactions correctly, leading them back to branches.
Cognitive overload
Too much information, poorly organised, with no clear visual hierarchy.
Feature blindness
Key features existed but were buried, users couldn’t find what they needed.
Empathise
Understanding BLF users through direct research
We focused on understanding BLF users through direct research, uncovering their motivations, behaviours and pain points to ground every design decision in real needs.
Mindsets
A closer look at key user groups to understand why users behave as they do.
The cautious saver
Values security and stability above everything, needs to trust every tap before confirming a transaction.
The busy professional
No time for branch visits, expects banking to work fast, clearly and without friction.
The daily spender
Uses the app constantly for small transactions, needs instant feedback and full spending visibility.
The family manager
Handles multiple accounts and responsibilities, needs organisation, overview and control in one place.
The Lebanese expat
Managing money across borders, needs seamless transfers and multi-currency clarity.
Discovery activities
- 15+
- Interviews
- 100+
- Survey responses
- 1
- End-to-end experience map
Define
Finding clarity in the research
In this phase, we distilled research insights into clear problem statements, aligning the team on the most critical user needs and opportunities, and setting a focused, user-led direction for what to solve next.
Trust before features
Users didn’t need more features, they needed to trust the ones already there. Unclear feedback states and missing confirmation moments were the root cause of branch dependency.
Complexity dressed as simplicity
The existing app looked clean on the surface but buried critical actions under confusing navigation patterns, forcing users to memorise paths instead of discovering them naturally.
Banking in two languages, one experience
Lebanese users think and communicate in Arabic and French simultaneously, yet the app treated language as a toggle, not a design principle. Tone, labels and microcopy all needed rethinking.
Prototype
Removing hesitation from the start
The myBLF onboarding experience was designed to eliminate friction before users even reached the app. Instead of overwhelming users with forms and steps upfront, we focused on building immediate confidence through biometric login, clear progress indicators, and a setup flow that felt personal from the very first screen.
During ideation, we restructured the entire myBLF experience around how users think and move, not how the bank’s internal departments are organised. Every navigation decision, content grouping and flow sequence was validated against real user mental models before a single screen was designed.
The approach
This project began with a simple question: what needs to be true for myBLF to work for both users and the bank? Rather than rushing into screen design, the focus was on building shared understanding, making research visible, and validating every decision before committing to it.
