Wells Fargo — A Groundbreaking Journey in UX Innovation

Card underutilization is an industry-wide problem: issuers spend to approve customers who then never activate. Wells Fargo engaged the studio to treat it as an experience problem rather than an acquisition one. The studio led the end-to-end UX process across four surfaces — web, mobile, in-branch displays and the ATM — making activating and using cards noticeably simpler.

Role: UX Design

Overview

Across the card industry, a large share of approved cards are never activated — the acquisition spend lands, and the revenue it was meant to unlock does not follow. Wells Fargo engaged the team to redefine the credit card user experience against that problem, driving conversion and active usage among both new and existing customers. Activation does not happen in one place: a card arrives and is activated at an ATM, at a branch, on the web, or on a phone. The studio was responsible for one coherent experience across all four surfaces, rather than a design optimised for one and degraded on the rest.

Role

As the UX leader, the studio navigated the complexities of the financial services space and worked closely with both internal stakeholders and external collaborators, leading the end-to-end User Experience Design process for the project and aligning the team's work with both the client's business goals and the needs of end users.

Process

Low engagement and underutilization are structural in this category rather than particular to any one issuer, so the studio worked to the three-step user-centred design process of the time: an early focus on users and their tasks, empirical measurement of how the product actually gets used, and iterative design. Two of the three ran as intended. The middle one did not, and the team was explicit about it rather than letting the process imply otherwise.

• An early focus on users and tasks. The cheapest moment to change direction is before anything is built, when assumptions are fewest and nothing has to be undone to act on what is learned. The team gathered insights from internal teams — design, creative and marketing — through informal workshops and brainstorming sessions where members shared their perspectives on pain points and opportunities, and reviewed existing user data to identify the patterns and needs that would shape design decisions.
• Empirical measurement, and where this engagement fell short of it. The principle is that a usable product is proven rather than asserted: participants attempt real tasks against a prototype and the results are counted. This engagement included no research with cardholders. What stood in for it was the room — the work went up on the war-room wall every morning, all of it from everyone, and was taken apart rapid-fire, with only the strongest ideas carrying into the next round — alongside internal usability reviews where the design team, accounts, and other key stakeholders walked through the designs. That is a real selection mechanism, run by people with taste and domain knowledge. It is not the same thing as measurement, and the studio does not claim it was.
• Iterative design. Wireframes, journey maps, and interactive prototypes spanning web, mobile, in-branch displays and the ATM, revised every round, with the daily critique keeping the loop short. A core focus was simplifying credit card usage by making key tasks easy to complete, and a quick design system held visual and functional consistency across every surface as the work changed underneath it — with the visual design and agency account teams keeping typography, iconography and every touchpoint aligned to brand.

Challenges

The most significant challenge was coordinating with various stakeholders at the pace the agency worked at. The regulated domain the client operates in set what could ship rather than how quickly, so multiple moving parts had to stay aligned without slowing down. Strong communication and collaboration ensured a cohesive design vision that was understood and implemented effectively across all teams.

Results

The project's success was reflected in the positive feedback received from both client and stakeholders. The redesigned interface was seen as a significant improvement: reviewers across design, creative, marketing and the accounts team judged activation and everyday card tasks noticeably simpler than what they replaced. That was an internal assessment — the engagement did not include direct research with cardholders.

The design helped the project meet its business goals by reinforcing a commitment to delivering user-centric solutions. It aligned with the broader vision of making Wells Fargo's credit card offerings more accessible and usable for customers across every surface they reach them on.

Conclusion

This project demonstrated the power of a user-centered design approach in the financial services industry. By integrating usability heuristics and leveraging insights from generative research, the team was able to design an innovative, intuitive experience that addressed both business and user needs. This experience reinforced the studio's ability to create impactful, user-friendly solutions within complex, highly regulated industries.