ila Bank: Personal Loans
Bringing a new feature to life
Leading the design of ila Bank’s first-ever
personal loan experience.
Project Overview
Team: Four Product Designers, Client Partner
Collaborated with: Qubstudio
Created at : Systems Ltd.
Industry: Digital Banking
What I worked on
Market & User Research
UX/UI Design
Design System and Documentation
The first digital bank in Bahrain built on cutting-edge technologies to provide customers with a frictionless online banking experience. Powered by Bank ABC, the mobile-only bank is widely known as a digital pioneer in the MENA market.
ila Bank: Digital Mobile-Only Bank
The challenge
ila Bank needed a way to introduce personal loans within its digital platform, transforming a traditionally complex process into an experience customers can easily navigate and adopt.
The approach
Consistent visual language
Introduced dedicated icons, illustrations, and a distinct color system to give loans a recognizable identity within ila app.
End-to-end journey design
Crafted the complete personal loans flow within the mobile app, from wireframes to polished UI.
Focused user experience
Simplified the most-used screen through market research and user testing, making it clear and approachable.
The base layer
Wireframes helped us break down the flows for a smoother user experience. Simple structures laid the groundwork before adding layers of design flavor.
Loans tab exploration
Our ideation explored different color directions to set the right tone, along with multiple layouts and entry points—ranging from a dedicated Loans tab to surfacing personal loans within existing menus.
Crafting the final experience
With the visual language defined, we moved into creating high-fidelity designs and prototypes using Figma.
Business requirements for loan calculator
The loan calculator needed to support three parameters:
Loan Amount
Duration (in months/years)
Monthly Installment (with reverse calculation)
The challenge was ensuring users understood what they needed to input versus what would be automatically calculated.
Exploration
Initial design directions
Validation
Gather insights from real users
We tested two approaches for the loan calculator.
Users manually entered the loan amount and duration.
A slider allowed users to adjust both values.
From confusion to clarity
Iterations shaped by user insights
User feedback & challenges
Feedback was split:
Some found manual entry too tedious.
Others felt sliders were imprecise.
Early tests revealed confusion about the Monthly Installment field.
Design decisions
To address both user and business needs, we:
Combined manual entry (for loan amount) with an intuitive slider (for duration).
Introduced a switch option to clarify input vs. auto-calculated values.
Enhancing transparency
We added a detailed breakdown of values, giving users full clarity on how their loan is structured.
Visual refinement
We replaced the light blue interface with a trustworthy green—feedback showed this color felt clearer and more reliable to users.
Reflecting
on this journey
Thank you for accompanying me on this exciting journey. I hope you enjoyed exploring the ila Banks loans as much as I did creating it! Here's to many more adventures in the world of design.
