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Case study /02·Banking × Design Systems·2018 — 2024

Aval Digital Labs

Banco de Occidente

Redesigning digital banking for one of Colombia's largest banks — and building the system that keeps it consistent.

/ Role
Senior Product Designer · DS Gatekeeper
/ Duration
6 years
/ Team
12+ product squads
/ Year
2018 — 2024
The challenge

Banco de Occidente serves millions of customers through web and mobile banking. The product was fragmented across many squads working independently, leading to inconsistent UX, accessibility gaps, and slow shipping cycles. We needed a design system that could scale governance without slowing teams down.

The approach

How we shipped it

01

Took ownership as official Design System Gatekeeper — the role that approves additions, deprecations, and patterns across all squads.

02

Ran monthly workshops, design crits, and 1:1 mentorship sessions to spread system literacy across the org.

03

Designed and shipped redesigns of core banking flows — transfers, payments, account management — for both mobile and web.

04

Established review rituals that caught accessibility and consistency issues before development handoff.

05

Mentored junior and mid-level designers, growing the digital banking design org's craft level.

The outcome

From fragmented to coherent at bank scale.

Over six years, the design system became the spine of Banco de Occidente's digital banking. Squads ship faster, accessibility audits pass first time, and customer-facing UX is recognizably one product.

12+
Product squads
6yr
Tenure
M+
Customers reached
/ Tools & Methods
FigmaSketchDesign TokensPrototypingMentorship
/ Live link
Visit adldigitallab.com
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