CommBank is one of Australia's biggest banks. Millions of people trust it with their money every day, which means every new experience it puts in front of customers has to earn that trust.

New technology moves fast. Banks move carefully. My work sat in between, separating the ideas worth building from the ones that only sounded good.

I was part of an emerging technology team focused on zero-to-one product ideas. I led design across business units, finding where new technology could help customers, validating ideas through research, and shaping the product vision. Then I'd bring them to life through prototyping, design, and delivery.

Most of this work lived in undefined problem spaces, where there was room to experiment and plenty of ideas changed shape along the way.

Cheaper fuel, without the search

Fuel apps put the work on customers, so most people didn't bother. Fuel Finder flipped that around. Using CommBank's transaction data to predict when someone would next need to fill up, it nudged them at the right moment with the cheapest nearby station already found.

I owned design end to end, from customer research and shaping product strategy to prototyping and working with engineers to ship. Rather than build the full product upfront, we ran three experiments: a single push notification to 50,000 customers, a pilot in the CommBank app for 250,000, then a rebuilt experience for all NSW customers.

Over the first ten months, more than 109,000 people opted in, saving an average of 5.45% per fill and almost $2 million in total.

A consolidated view of your credit cards

When your credit cards are spread across different banks, it's easy to lose track of the full picture. Credit Manager brought them together in one place, giving customers a clear view of what they owed, tools to stay on top of repayments, and a path to paying them off faster.

I worked closely with engineers and third-party vendors to understand complex data structures, technical limitations, and tricky edge cases, then translated them into an experience that felt simple and clear for customers.

Spotting scams before they land

Forward a suspicious text message and ScamCheck tells you whether it's likely a scam. When it is, it explains why, pointing out things like unfamiliar senders, suspicious links, or urgency tactics.

In research, people liked the idea of ScamCheck, but felt confident they could spot a scam on their own. The data said otherwise, with 84% of scam complaints over four months coming from text messages. That gap between confidence and reality became the real problem to solve, so I pushed for a deeper round of research to understand why people were falling for scams before we committed to a direction.

Once we decided to build, we partnered with Truyu to get to market quickly, launching ScamCheck inside their iOS and Android apps. I led design across both teams, working with CommBank engineers to map the experience to technical requirements, and with Truyu's product team to design within their existing product.

Connecting customers with local businesses

Local Offers was a pilot within CommBank Yello that let customers find nearby businesses on a map or list, check details like opening hours without leaving the app, and earn cashback straight to their account. It tested whether a more local, personal offers experience would get customers engaging differently.

With two customer groups, existing cashback processes, and Mastercard all in play, this was as much a systems problem as an experience one. It meant bringing the retail and business sides of the bank together, aligning teams that don't usually design for each other's customers. I mapped how everything fit together, then designed for both ends: a simple way for customers to discover and support local businesses, and a worthwhile experience for the business owners taking part.

A small charity and a national foundation can use the same platform, but neither wants to look alike. At ANZ, I helped design the fundraising tools not-for-profits use, built to be flexible enough for each organisation to make them their own.

The work was a lesson in systems thinking. Peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, ticketing, terminals and payments each had their own needs, but they all had to work together as one. My job was keeping the detail and the bigger picture in view at the same time.

As a Senior Experience Designer, I worked end-to-end across products and platforms. I ran customer research and workshops, mapped journeys to find opportunities, and set design direction. Then I prototyped and designed accessible, production-ready experiences, and stayed with delivery teams through to launch.

Most of the work was about getting the connections right. It's where I built a strong product lens and a real appreciation for the craft of interconnected experiences.

Making it easy to give, wherever the event is

Fundraising events rely on people giving in the moment, and the Shout portable terminal app powered by ANZ is how that happens. It lets charities set up quickly, take donations at any kind of event, and keep the experience simple for the person giving.

I designed the app from research through to delivery. I interviewed charities and donors, built scenarios for different kinds of fundraising events, and tested concepts before moving into high-fidelity design.

Giving only works if it's easy, and events are often run by volunteers who need to pick it up quickly. So the whole app came back to one idea: keep what matters up front, and let everything else wait until it's needed.

Closing the gap between app and web

ANZ's Shout app helps charities collect donations, but over time the app and its web platform had drifted apart. New features were shipping on web that the app couldn't support, leaving app users with less than the website offered.

I brought the app and web back in line. I rethought how the app was structured so it matched the web experience, then refreshed the interface to give both platforms one consistent look and feel.

I designed the new structure to flex, so features still on the roadmap could slot in later without another redesign.

A donation page charities can make their own

ANZ's donation form is a payment portal that lets charities take donations and sell merchandise straight from their own website, with payments, receipting and administration handled in one place. But research with charities, donors and an internal operations team showed it wasn't working as well as it could for any of them.

I led the rethink of the donation experience. We replaced a long list of form fields with a modular page template, which cut the load on donors and gave charities far more say over how their page looked. A content management system let charities build and manage their donation page without writing any code, with room for larger text, images and embedded video to carry their own brand. The same control reached down to the form itself, with sections charities could include or leave out.

The new design launched in May 2020 and was first used for The Big Freeze 2020 campaign, which raised $3.4m through the form, up from $2.2m the year before. FightMND said the flexibility let them put a stronger branded message in front of donors.

I joined Punters when it was a startup and stayed through its acquisition by News Corp. More acquisitions followed, and our product suite grew from two to five media, sports and wagering products. All of them were built for people making decisions in the moment, where odds, racing and form change by the minute.

Innovation here meant speed. We built product features and shipped them quickly to get feedback, then used it to decide what to do next. The interaction details usually decided whether an idea worked: how fast someone could compare odds, find a race, or get to what they came for.

It taught me how much small interaction decisions add up, and how much you learn by shipping something small and watching what people do with it.

A dedicated horse racing product for a new market

With ambitions of expanding into the UK market, NewsPerform partnered with The Sun to launch Sun Racing, a dedicated horse racing product for a new audience. That meant building standalone iOS and Android apps from scratch, and integrating new racing features into the existing sports section of The Sun's website.

Betting odds comparison, rethought for Android

Odds is a betting odds comparison platform combining live odds across sports, racing, and entertainment with editorial content to help wagerers make more informed decisions. After early growth on web and iOS, the expansion to Android was an opportunity to do more than just port the experience. I led the design with a focus on improving the UX across the board, using the new platform as a chance to rethink how the product worked for its users.

Sweet Creative is a design studio, and it's where I learned the craft: how a logo, a layout or a line of type communicates before anyone clicks anything.

Early in my career I worked across brand and identity, web and digital, typography, advertising, signage, print, photography and art direction, helping clients get to the outcomes they were after.