Lumen Bank

The challenge

Lumen had grown from a challenger bank into a household name, but its app had not kept up. Years of features added by separate teams had left customers with four different ways to send money, a savings area most people never found, and an App Store rating stuck at 3.9.

The brief was simple to say and hard to do: make the app the reason people choose Lumen, without pausing a roadmap that shipped every two weeks.

The approach

We started with money, not screens. Over six weeks we ran 32 interviews and a diary study with customers of every age, and mapped each way people moved money in and out of their accounts. The pattern was clear. People did not want more features. They wanted to feel certain that a payment had gone exactly where they meant it to.

• Four payment flows merged into a single Send journey, with a clear review step and real-time status
• A home screen rebuilt around what is coming up next, not just what has already happened
• Savings goals moved next to the balance, where people already look
• Every screen built on Halo, a new design system shared with web and support tools

We released in small slices behind feature flags, so every change reached a small group of customers first and earned its way to everyone else.

The outcome

Six months after the full launch, weekly active use was up by almost a third, payment-related support tickets had fallen by 42%, and the app rating had climbed to 4.8. Lumen now leads with the app in its advertising.