Boubyan Bank

Context

Boubyan is an Islamic bank routinely named Kuwait’s most loved brand. McKinsey Digital led the transformation engagement; I joined as product designer inside the delivery team. The ask was ambitious — a new consumer experience that had to feel coherent across four touchpoints customers moved between in a single day: the mobile app, an in-branch iPad used by relationship officers, the ATM network, and a companion smartwatch app.

Research & discovery

The team ran two tracks of research in parallel. A quantitative pass on the existing mobile product showed where customers dropped out — unsurprisingly, transfers and bill pay. The more interesting finding came from in-branch observation: customers who preferred the branch weren’t afraid of the app, they were performing social and emotional rituals that the digital product didn’t accommodate. They wanted to confirm an action with another human before committing. They wanted receipts they could hold.

Islamic banking adds a layer on top: certain products (Murabaha, Ijara) have specific disclosure and consent steps that conventional banking apps don’t handle, and getting those wrong doesn’t just hurt conversion — it breaks trust with a customer base for whom Sharia compliance is the reason they chose this bank.

Approach

Cross-device consistency meant more than a shared design system. Every journey — transfer, bill pay, financing request — had to have an equivalent, surface-appropriate expression on each device, and handoffs between surfaces had to be first-class. A customer starting a request on the ATM and finishing it on mobile should feel one action, not two. We designed the interaction vocabulary first (commit, confirm, hand off), then let each surface’s affordances shape the presentation.

Solution

The mobile product — the primary surface for day-to-day banking, built around speed for recurring transactions and clarity for the irregular ones.

The branch iPad — the tool a relationship officer uses sitting next to a customer. Designed for co-viewing, not for the banker alone.

The ATM and watch extensions — each respecting the constraints of its surface, each carrying the same interaction vocabulary.

Outcome

The new experience shipped across all four surfaces and anchored Boubyan’s digital transformation narrative through the engagement.

Reflection

Working with McKinsey on a transformation of this size taught me how much of enterprise design is organizational work — aligning product, compliance, risk, and brand across a long delivery window. The design system was important, but the forum that reviewed every decision across those four groups mattered more.