Role
Lead Product Designer
Design Team
Tommy Partl, Senior UX Writer
Timeline
2025 - 2026
Lorem Ipslum
A first impression that needed a rethink
Opening a new bank account is one of the few moments when clients are actively engaged and motivated to get started. Yet KeyBank's onboarding experience lived inside a horizontal carousel on the Account Summary page, where setup tasks competed with promotional content and everyday banking activities for attention.
While users could complete onboarding tasks, the experience lacked a clear sense of progress, making it difficult to understand what was required. Completed tasks stayed visible, important features required manual enrollment, and progress felt static rather than rewarding.
The experience technically gave clients things to do, but it didn't give them a strong sense of where they were, what mattered most, or what came next.
The opportunity
I saw an opportunity to rethink onboarding as a guided journey, one that helps clients focus on what matters first, builds confidence through visible progress, and gradually introduces additional ways to personalize their banking experience that also increases adoption of KeyBank's digital services.
VISUAL → OLD EXPERIENCE
Use your first two screenshots here.
I'd show the old Account Summary + carousel together, with subtle annotations:
Onboarding competed with everyday banking content
Tasks remained visible after completion
Required and optional actions weren't clearly differentiated
Clients had to manually enable key features
Don't over-annotate. The screenshots should do most of the explaining.
From a task list to a guided experience
The central question became:
How might we transform onboarding from a collection of setup tasks into a guided experience that helps new clients confidently get their accounts ready to use?
Rather than treating onboarding as a checklist of features, I focused on creating an experience that could answer three questions for clients:
What do I need to do?
What's already done?
What should I do next?
With the opportunity defined, I established four principles to guide the redesign. Each one addressed a different part of the onboarding experience—from helping clients understand where to start to making it easier to complete important actions.
The redesign wasn't based solely on what looked better or felt more intuitive.
I used UserZoom to conduct A/B usability testing, comparing onboarding concepts and observing how participants understood the experience and completed key tasks.
The testing helped validate the direction and identify opportunities to refine the experience before finalizing the designs.
VISUAL
Keep this section intentionally lightweight.
Instead of a large research-process timeline, show:
Test
UserZoom A/B testing
→
Observe
How participants understood the experience and completed key actions
→
Refine
Design updates based on what we learned
Then show your actual findings and resulting design changes once we add them.
The change was intentionally simple: remove an unnecessary decision.
But the outcome demonstrated how small interaction decisions can have a meaningful impact when applied at scale.
36%
Paperless enrollment rate
222K
accounts enrolled within 6 days
<1%
unenrollment rate
$2.2M
estimated annual cost savings
By removing an unnecessary selection step, the redesigned experience made Paperless enrollment easier to complete while preserving user visibility and control.
VISUAL: This should be one of the most visually dramatic sections of the case study. Use the actual Paperless UI above or beside the metrics rather than separating the design from the outcome.
The principles focused on making onboarding clearer, more responsive, and easier to act on.
The principles focused on making onboarding clearer, more responsive, and easier to act on.
01 — Give onboarding a clear home
I introduced a dedicated onboarding workspace to give new clients a clear starting point for account setup. By separating onboarding from everyday banking activities, the experience increases the visibility of high-value actions while helping users complete setup more efficiently.
VISUAL — BEFORE → AFTER
Before
Account Summary + onboarding carousel
After
Dedicated Account Setup experience
Moving onboarding into its own destination gave clients a clearer mental model of where to start and removed competition from everyday banking content.
VISUAL TIP: Make this one of the largest visuals on the page. A side-by-side comparison immediately communicates the magnitude of the structural change.
02 - Prioritize required tasks
Once onboarding had its own destination, I could rethink how the tasks were organized. Not every action has the same level of importance. Clients first need to establish the fundamentals of their account before exploring additional ways to personalize their banking experience.
The new experience separates Required Steps from More ways to personalize, giving clients a clearer sense of what needs their attention now and what they can explore later.
This hierarchy creates a more intentional path through setup, reducing cognitive load while increasing completion of the actions that matter most to both clients and the business.
VISUAL
Show a large crop of the new experience:
Account Setup
↓
Required Steps
↓
More ways to personalize
Add a subtle annotation:
Essential actions first. Optional exploration second.
Why this matters
This wasn't just a visual hierarchy decision. It changed the role of onboarding from presenting a list of features to helping clients understand what matters now.
03 - Make progress visible
The original carousel didn't really acknowledge completion. When a client finished a task, the card remained visible and simply moved to the end of the carousel. The experience continued presenting completed work instead of reflecting the client's progress.
I redesigned the interaction so onboarding could respond to what clients had already accomplished. Completed tasks could leave the active task list, while a progress indicator gives clients a persistent sense of where they are in the journey.
The goal was simple:
The experience should feel like it's moving forward with the client.
VISUAL — GIF
This is a perfect place for motion.
Show:
Task before completion
→ Task completed
→ Task disappears
→ Progress updates
Caption:
Completed work gets out of the way, allowing clients to focus on what's next.
This visual is much more effective than explaining the interaction with several static screenshots.
04 — Remove unnecessary decisions
One of the clearest examples of this principle was Paperless Statements. KeyBank already had a Paperless enrollment interstitial, but clients rarely enrolled. The existing experience required users to manually select which eligible accounts they wanted to enroll, adding extra clicks and another decision to the process.
I saw an opportunity to let the system do more of the work. Instead of asking clients to select eligible accounts themselves, the redesigned experience pre-selects those accounts for them. Clients can still review what will be enrolled, but they no longer have to configure a choice the system already understands.
VISUAL — BEFORE → AFTER
Show the actual experience.
Previous experience
Select accounts → Review → Enroll
Redesigned experience
Review pre-selected accounts → Enroll
Keep the interaction comparison visually simple so the reduction in effort is immediately obvious.
This project changed how I think about onboarding. I initially saw onboarding as a set of tasks that needed to be completed. Through the redesign, I came to see it more as a guided relationship-building moment: the product has an opportunity to establish confidence, help clients understand what matters, and make the next action feel obvious.
The strongest improvements weren't necessarily the biggest visual changes. They came from questioning where clients were being asked to make decisions or do work that the experience could simplify for them.
