Project name: Momentum Adviser Mobile App Redesign
Client: Momentum
(a DVT client)
My role: Product Design Lead
Date: October 2023 – September 2025
Another hurdle: the mobile app
About a year before go-live, my scope expanded from the adviser web portal into the mobile workstream as Lead Product Designer. Momentum’s existing Flutter app had an ageing codebase and presented a security risk, while the replacement needed to align with the new web platform. The immediate brief was to establish a viable navigation shell quickly enough for development to proceed. My focus was the interaction model, cross-channel logic and product direction; the screens made that thinking testable and gave delivery teams a clear basis to work from.
Sixteen months before launch
Because the existing app was being decommissioned, the replacement had to launch alongside the web portal in March 2025. We compressed the design cycle while maintaining cross-channel consistency and working within security, feature and delivery constraints.
About a year before go-live, my scope expanded from the adviser web portal into the mobile workstream as Lead Product Designer. Momentum’s existing Flutter app had an ageing codebase and presented a security risk, while the replacement needed to align with the new web platform. The immediate brief was to establish a viable navigation shell quickly enough for development to proceed. My focus was the interaction model, cross-channel logic and product direction; the screens made that thinking testable and gave delivery teams a clear basis to work from.
Because the existing app was being decommissioned, the replacement had to launch alongside the web portal in March 2025. We compressed the design cycle while maintaining cross-channel consistency and working within security, feature and delivery constraints.
A week after I joined the mobile workstream, my CX colleague went on leave and handed me the previous month’s Google Analytics data. I analysed usage patterns across the available channels to establish what people actually used, rather than relying on inherited assumptions. That evidence gave us a more realistic view of the user base and directly informed scope and feature priorities.
Initial discovery and reduced scope (Define)
The quantitative data showed that new leads, notifications and tracking accounted for most meaningful usage, while onboarding and several features previously considered essential were barely used or not used at all. That evidence materially reduced the MVP1 scope and allowed the team to focus on the capabilities that mattered most.
Developing the navigation shell
Based on the analytics and a heuristic review of the existing app, I created wireframes to communicate the navigation concept and interaction model. We used them as testable prototypes with ten users supplied by Momentum stakeholders, allowing the team to validate the direction before visual refinement. The goal was not pixel-perfect UI; it was evidence-led product direction that specialist designers and developers could take forward.
Heuristics
I analysed the existing experience to identify usability issues and opportunities.
How did we miss that?
As part of the redesign, I introduced a modal tray for secondary functionality. I initially overlooked the Gestalt principles of proximity and figure-ground in the colour treatment, and 66% of participants struggled to understand the component. Many tried to use the wrong control to open the menu. Between interview sessions, I iterated on the navigation icon and colours. The revised component removed the confusion and performed successfully in subsequent interviews.
Deeper insights
During the second round of interviews, we explored how advisers and assistants handled new prospects when they were away from their computers. Earlier analytics had shown that the app’s onboarding flows were not being used, so the important question became what users were doing instead and why.
All ten participants described a similar pattern: WhatsApp for initial contact, followed by a phone call and email, with the prospect only being added to the web portal once there was clear interest. The finding simplified the roadmap and shifted our thinking from reproducing a formal onboarding flow towards supporting the communication ecosystem users already relied on.
What icon?
Across 12 user interviews, the same issue surfaced: no participant understood the amber “in-progress” status icon as intended. Several expected it to be an interactive control and tried to open it instead of reading it as a status indicator.
Redesigning the status icon
The same status icon was used across both the web portal and mobile app. We redesigned it and introduced a replacement that tested significantly better and was understood as intended.
The conceptual model
To align the mobile experience with the web portal, I created a conceptual model based on user feedback and discussions with Product Owners. We combined notifications and tracking into a single inbox because the existing setup duplicated information and fragmented related work. The model simplified the user’s mental model while also improving consistency across channels.
We lost one…
Six months before the decommissioning of the two legacy platforms and the launch of the new web portal and mobile app, a UX colleague working on Client Advice Services had his contract ended because of project cost constraints. It affected both delivery and team morale, as he was a valued colleague and friend. I was asked to take over his workstream for the remainder of the project, which added another area of responsibility during the final delivery period.
Four months before launch
By four months before launch, my remit had expanded from a relatively small part of the web portal into a mobile-app redesign and two additional workstreams. The programme reinforced how quickly scope, team structure and delivery constraints could change, and how important it was to maintain a coherent view across channels rather than optimise each interface in isolation.
The experience also shifted how I understood my contribution. The value was increasingly less about producing individual screens and more about helping the team make evidence-based decisions, connect user behaviour to system constraints, and preserve coherence as the platform evolved. That became an important step towards the broader systems and governance perspective I developed later.
Prototype
Figma prototype used to test the product concept and interaction model.
Prototype
Figma prototype used to test the product concept and interaction model.
Prototype
Figma prototype used to test the product concept and interaction model.
Retrospective lens
The Chief Technology and AI Officer (CTAIO) Programme at NUS Computing gave me clearer language for what this work actually demanded: orchestration across product, business, design, technology and development under security, legacy, sequencing and cross-channel constraints. The interface was one visible layer; the real design problem was the system of decisions around it.
That is why systems architecture, technology strategy and governance fit naturally with how I work. I can still move into UI when needed, but my core contribution is defining structure, intent, controls and direction so specialist design and engineering teams can execute coherently.
Where this thinking developed next
These projects increasingly moved my focus beyond individual interfaces towards systems, services, operating models and the orchestration of business, design, technology and delivery. I later developed this perspective further through the NUS Chief Technology and AI Officer Programme, culminating in a capstone focused on AI-native architecture, governance, operating models, strategic prioritisation and responsible scale.