EXPERIENCE LAB
OVERVIEW
Once the redesign was in progress, I realised we needed a reliable way to validate design decisions and to create a space for continuous learning.
A place where we could observe, analyse, and understand our users and industry in real time, ensuring every product design decision was grounded in evidence, not assumptions.
So, I took the initiative to build Onmo Lab, the company's first dedicated in-house testing setup and knowledge base.
Turning insight into impact
We started by prototyping all key journeys and testing them through both quantitative and qualitative methods — blending usability data with real user feedback.
I built test scripts using insights from customer complaints and support calls to ensure the redesign was not only improving aesthetics but also solving the right problems.
For our in-person sessions, I set up two cameras and a condenser microphone to capture high-quality video and audio.
One camera was positioned overhead to record users interacting with the prototype, while the other focused directly on their expressions as they tackled different tasks.
Capturing both perspectives proved invaluable — it revealed not only where users struggled, but how they felt in those moments.
To make these insights accessible company-wide, I also configured a live streaming setup, broadcasting sessions privately via our YouTube channel.
This allowed team members who couldn't attend in person — from compliance to developers to stakeholders — to observe real customers interact with our new app in real time. It brought everyone closer to our users and fostered a genuine sense of empathy and shared ownership across departments.
It became a game-changer. Suddenly, conversations shifted from "I think…" to "We saw users struggle with…". Watching actual customers get stuck, smile, or hesitate during tasks helped teams internalise design challenges faster than any report or presentation ever could.
In addition to in-person sessions, we also conducted remote testing to reach a broader and more diverse audience beyond our existing customer base.
I partnered with a research recruitment agency to onboard non-Onmo users who fit our target personas — helping us gather fresh, unbiased perspectives.
In total, this gave us a pool of 30 participants who provided consent to be re-contacted for future usability tests and concept validations.
This consistent, ready-to-engage group became a key asset for ongoing product and UX iterations.
After conducting countless testing sessions and design iterations, I was finally content with what I called Onmo App v1. We analysed all findings from our sessions and presented them back to the company — ensuring everyone was aligned on the results and confident that we had addressed all previously identified issues.
Key outcomes from user testing sessions:
- The process built genuine trust in design across departments, showing that we were open to challenge, feedback, and continuous improvement.
- It created a culture of ownership — people from every corner of the business started caring about app performance and customer satisfaction.
- The live sessions made testing fun and engaging; colleagues across teams tuned in regularly and became invested in seeing users succeed.
- Most importantly, it gave us a robust, repeatable framework for making continuous design iterations — testing, learning, and improving until we reached the best possible experience.
knowledge hub
Beyond user testing, I wanted Onmo Lab to become our intelligence centre — a place to learn about market shifts, regulations, and behavioural trends.
We built a shared knowledge repository, gathering insights from the UK fintech landscape, FCA updates, and emerging design and technology trends.
This helped us stay ahead of changes in the regulatory environment while aligning our design strategy with where the industry was heading.
It also became a reference point for designers, copywriters, and even leadership — ensuring decisions were always informed by fresh, relevant context.
customer archetypes
To make our design and communication more intentional, I led the effort to analyse and document our core customer archetypes.
We looked at demographic data, behavioural analytics, and customer support transcripts to uncover recurring motivations and frustrations.
This led to defining a set of archetypes that represented Onmo's real users — from the "Credit Builder" trying to improve their score to the "Money Manager" focused on cashback and control.
Having these archetypes documented and accessible helped every team — Product, Design, and Marketing — to tailor messaging, journeys, and features to real needs, not abstract personas.
extended UK benchmarking
Another pillar of Onmo Lab was a super-extended benchmarking study across the UK fintech space (and beyond).
We analysed competitors' products, app UX, brand systems, tone of voice, and feature sets, covering both established players and emerging startups.
This deep dive revealed not just how we compared, but where our differentiation potential was strongest — helping us refine Onmo's product vision and design principles.
This also provided clear metrics to show leadership where we were excelling, where we lagged, and how our new design direction could position us among the most trusted digital-first finance brands.
DATA DASHBOARD
To complement our qualitative research, I partnered with the Data team to create a lightweight, design-focused dashboard that pulled in key signals from tools like DataBricks, DataDog, and MixPanel.
The goal wasn't to build a full analytics platform, but to give the design team enough behavioural insight to make more informed decisions without relying on intuition alone.
We focused on essential markers — things like drop-off points in key flows, task completion signals, and general patterns of usage. Even at an early stage, these simple indicators helped us validate hypotheses, spot friction areas quickly, and prioritise what mattered most.
Over time, this became a useful feedback loop for design, product, and engineering. It helped us pair qualitative testing with behavioural data, gave us confidence in the direction of our iterations, and gradually strengthened a more evidence-led approach across the org.
I've documented every step of this journey in extensive reports and insights — too many to include here — but I'm always happy to walk anyone through the full story.
outcome
Onmo Lab evolved into more than just a testing space — it became a continuous discovery engine. It built empathy across teams, grounded our decisions in data, and turned design research into a shared responsibility rather than a specialist's task.