NatWest

Project summary

NatWest aimed to improve its service to connect small and medium-sized business owners with mentors. After the beta version launched, I led a strategic redesign project to identify user pain points, conduct generative research, and co-create solutions. My work focused on ensuring the service addressed the diverse needs of UK businesses across different sizes, sectors, and stages of growth.

TEAM & ROLE

Role: Lead UX Researcher & Designer
Team: Myself and a Project Manager
My Contribution: Project planning, research and survey design, facilitation of workshops, insight synthesis, and final wireframes

WHAT I LEARNED

This project taught me the value of blending strong research foundations with creative framing to win stakeholder engagement. While I naturally lead with evidence and user needs, I saw how energising ideas—like community-led models or mentor figureheads—can help bring research to life and inspire direction.

WHAT I LEARNED

Problem Statement

The beta version of the platform revealed two core issues: users experienced choice paralysis when navigating vague service categories and defaulted to generic options like “General Business Support.” This indicated that the service lacked the clarity and structure needed for users to find relevant help. NatWest had not conducted generative research prior to the beta launch, presenting a key opportunity to reimagine the experience based on real user expectations and behaviours.

Goals & Success Metrics

• Understand the needs and mental models of small and medium-sized business owners

• Identify meaningful segments based on business size and context

• Improve how users are matched with mentors and services

• Design a more intuitive, tailored, and engaging experience

Process

Discovery workshop with stakeholders
Competitor and UX pattern analysis
Survey design, recruitment, and insight synthesis
Co-design workshop with internal teams
Final proposal and wireframes

The project began with a discovery workshop where I presented usability findings from the beta and proposed two strategic directions: improving the existing platform or conducting foundational research to inform a redesign. NatWest chose the latter, recognising the opportunity to better align the service with business users’ needs.

I conducted a competitor analysis of over 10 platforms across different business models, evaluating how each handled categorisation, mentor matching, and content presentation. These insights were grouped into service types—such as time-specific, subject-specific, prestige-driven, and gamified—and shared in FigJam to inspire ideation.

To gain broader insights, I designed a 28-question survey completed by 300 UK business owners, ensuring diverse representation across business size, location, and demographic profile. The results revealed a major insight: businesses with lower (<£250k) and higher (£750k–£2m) turnover had significantly different expectations around support format, topics, and engagement style. This finding led to a strong recommendation: users should be identified early in their journey and offered a tailored experience that reflects their business profile.