Bancolombia — Investment Experiences
Making complex investment products easier to understand, navigate, and validate through clearer UX structure.
I designed UX artifacts for Bancolombia's digital investment experiences, helping translate complex financial products into clearer flows, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, and validation materials. My work supported alignment between business, product, design, and development teams while improving the way users could understand and interact with investment-related experiences.
Company
Bancolombia
Industry
Finance / Banking / Investment products
Role
UX Designer
Product type
Digital investment experiences / Financial channels
Timeline
Sep 2019 – May 2020
Team
UX, Product, Business, Development, Research, Stakeholders
Methods
UX Research, IA, User Flows, Wireframes, Prototyping, Testing Scripts, Validation Support, Hi-fi Support
Tools
Figma / Sketch / InVision / Miro
Status
Delivered UX artifacts / Under NDA
Some parts of this project are under NDA, so I'm showing a curated version of the process, artifacts, and outcomes. Sensitive financial information, brand details, testing results, product screens, and business logic have been blurred or simplified while keeping the design decisions, methodology, and my role clear. I'm happy to walk through more detail privately in an interview or portfolio review.
Sensitive financial and product details have been blurred or simplified to protect confidential business information.
Context
Bancolombia needed UX support for digital investment experiences, where users had to understand financial products, navigate investment-related information, and complete tasks within channels that required clarity, trust, and precision.
Investment products can be difficult to understand, especially when users face unfamiliar terminology, decision-making pressure, and multiple steps across digital flows. My work focused on helping structure those experiences so they became more understandable, navigable, and easier to validate with users and stakeholders.
Why it mattered
Wireframes were the easy part. The harder job was translating financial complexity into something people could actually use, closing the gap between business and development, and getting enough validation in place that the team could decide with confidence before anything got built.
My role
I worked as UX Designer, contributing to user flows, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, research artifacts, testing scripts, validation support, and high-fidelity design support for investment-related digital experiences, collaborating closely with business, product, and development teams.
- Designed user flows for investment-related digital experiences.
- Structured information architecture to make financial content easier to navigate.
- Created wireframes and prototypes to communicate product logic and user paths.
- Supported research artifacts and usability testing scripts.
- Contributed to validation activities and synthesis of findings.
- Supported high-fidelity design based on validated UX direction.
- Helped translate complex financial products into more understandable digital experiences.
- Facilitated alignment between business, product, design, and development teams.
- Helped reduce ambiguity in the definition of investment product experiences.
The challenge
The main challenge was designing digital investment experiences that could make complex financial information easier to understand while supporting business goals, technical feasibility, and user confidence.
- User challenge: users needed to understand investment products, compare information, and move through digital flows with more clarity and confidence.
- Business challenge: Bancolombia needed investment experiences that could communicate financial products more clearly and support alignment across business, product, design, and development.
- Design challenge: the UX work required organizing complex financial information, defining clearer flows, supporting validation, and protecting sensitive information under confidentiality constraints.
Problem statement
How might we help users understand and navigate digital investment experiences more clearly, while supporting business alignment, validation, and development readiness in a complex financial context?
Goals & success criteria
User goals
- Help users understand investment-related information more clearly.
- Reduce confusion caused by financial terminology, steps, or product complexity.
- Improve confidence when navigating investment experiences.
Business goals
- Support clearer digital experiences for financial investment products.
- Align business, product, design, and development around a shared UX direction.
- Reduce ambiguity before implementation.
- Support validation of investment-related flows and content.
Design goals
- Create clear user flows, information architecture, wireframes, and prototypes.
- Support usability testing through scripts and research artifacts.
- Translate complex product logic into easier-to-understand experiences.
- Prepare UX artifacts that could support high-fidelity design and development alignment.
Process
01 — Discover
Understanding financial complexity before defining the experience
I started by understanding the investment product context, the business needs, and the type of users who would interact with these experiences. Before moving into wireframes, I focused on identifying what information users needed, where the experience could become confusing, and which parts required validation.
- Reviewed available product information, business requirements, and research inputs.
- Identified key user tasks and decision points within investment experiences.
- Mapped areas where financial terminology or product logic could create confusion.
- Worked with stakeholders to clarify scope, assumptions, and priorities.
- Identified which parts of the flow needed stronger validation before final design.
- Protected sensitive business and financial details through careful documentation and confidentiality.
How I used AI
This one predates my AI-assisted workflow entirely. Everything here came out of straight UX analysis: information architecture, stakeholder alignment, research artifacts, and a lot of validation.
Discovery structure used to understand where investment product complexity could affect user comprehension and decision-making.
02 — Define
Turning investment complexity into clearer flows and structure
After understanding the product context, I helped translate financial complexity into clearer UX direction. This meant defining flows, organizing information, and creating structures that could be reviewed by business, product, design, and development teams.
- Defined user flows for investment-related tasks.
- Structured information architecture to reduce cognitive load.
- Identified content hierarchy for financial product information.
- Clarified the relationship between steps, decisions, and user actions.
- Aligned UX direction with business, product, design, and development.
- Prepared flow logic for validation and later high-fidelity design.
How I used AI
No AI here either. Whatever value this phase added came from just sitting with the complexity: organizing the information, defining the flows, and getting stakeholders to actually agree on what the experience should be.
User flow used to align business logic, user needs, and development expectations before moving into detailed design.
03 — Develop
Exploring wireframes, prototypes, and validation materials
Once the UX structure was clearer, I created wireframes, prototypes, and research materials to support validation. The goal was to make the experience tangible enough for stakeholders and users to react to it before committing to final implementation.
- Created wireframes for investment-related flows.
- Built prototypes to communicate navigation, hierarchy, and interaction logic.
- Supported testing scripts and research artifacts for usability validation.
- Iterated based on feedback from stakeholders and validation activities.
- Supported high-fidelity design once the UX structure was defined.
- Helped ensure that sensitive financial information was handled carefully in documentation and visual materials.
How I used AI
Still no AI in the mix at this point. The back-and-forth of exploring and iterating ran on UX judgment, stakeholder feedback, and whatever the research and validation kept surfacing.
Wireframe exploration used to validate flow structure and information hierarchy before moving into high fidelity.
Validation material used to support user testing and reduce uncertainty before final design decisions.
04 — Deliver
Supporting final UX definition and development alignment
The final work contributed to clearer digital investment experiences through user flows, information architecture, prototypes, validation artifacts, and high-fidelity design support. These deliverables helped stakeholders align around the experience and reduced ambiguity before development.
- Delivered user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and information architecture artifacts.
- Supported usability testing scripts and validation materials.
- Helped synthesize findings from validation activities.
- Supported high-fidelity design based on UX direction.
- Facilitated alignment between business, product, design, and development.
- Helped translate complex financial product logic into clearer digital experiences.
How I used AI
No AI on this project, but it's part of why I work the way I do now: structure the information first, validate the logic, and only then move into detailed design, with or without AI in the loop.
Final experience simplified for portfolio purposes to show structure without exposing sensitive financial information.
Before / after
Before
Investment product experiences involved complex financial information, terminology, and flows that could create ambiguity for users and stakeholders.
After
The work translated investment complexity into clearer user flows, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, and validation materials that supported better understanding and alignment.
Final solution
The final work focused on three main experience improvements:
Clearer investment flows
I helped define user flows that made financial product journeys easier to understand, review, and validate.
Stronger information architecture
I organized investment-related information to reduce cognitive load and make complex financial content more navigable.
Validation-ready UX artifacts
I created wireframes, prototypes, and testing materials that supported feedback, alignment, and stronger design decisions before development.
Impact & results
User value
Helped make complex investment experiences easier to understand and navigate.
Business value
Supported alignment between business, product, design, and development around investment product experiences.
Product value
Translated financial product logic into clearer flows, wireframes, prototypes, and validation-ready UX artifacts.
Team / process value
Reduced ambiguity before development by making complex experience decisions tangible and easier to discuss.
Obstacles & trade-offs
This project required constant trade-offs between financial accuracy, user clarity, business expectations, confidentiality, and development feasibility. The challenge was not to oversimplify investment products, but to make them understandable without losing essential meaning.
- Translating complex financial products into clear user experiences.
- Balancing business requirements with user comprehension.
- Handling sensitive financial and brand information under confidentiality.
- Aligning multiple stakeholders around the same UX direction.
- Designing flows that could support validation and later implementation.
- Supporting high-fidelity design while keeping the UX structure clear.
- Working with investment content where trust, clarity, and precision were critical.
What I learned
This project reinforced that financial UX requires clarity, precision, and trust. The goal is not to remove complexity completely, but to structure it so users can understand what matters and move forward with confidence.
- I learned how to translate complex financial products into clearer digital flows.
- I strengthened my ability to structure information for high-trust experiences.
- I improved how I support validation through scripts, prototypes, and research artifacts.
- I learned how important alignment is between business, product, design, and development in financial products.
- I confirmed that information architecture is one of the strongest tools for reducing ambiguity.
- I strengthened my ability to work with sensitive information under confidentiality constraints.
Looking back, this is a good example of how I work when I'm dropped into a domain I don't know well: slow down, structure the information carefully, build artifacts people can actually validate against, and use that to turn ambiguity into something the team can trust.
Stephanie Cacheo — Senior UX Designer