Case study · Consumer finance
A finance app,
rebuilt for daily use.
Northwind had a capable product and quiet engagement. We redesigned and re-engineered the app end to end — and doubled daily active users in twelve weeks.
The challenge
Capable product,
quiet engagement
Northwind's app covered the essentials — accounts, transfers, investments — but usage told a different story. Most customers opened it a few times a month, sessions were short, and the most valuable features went undiscovered.
The product had grown feature by feature over four years. Each addition made sense on its own; together they had accumulated into navigation five levels deep, three visual languages, and a codebase that made every release slower than the last.
Our approach
One team,
one loop
Research and audit
Two weeks with usage data, support tickets and customer interviews — mapping what people needed daily against what the app made easy.
Redesign the core journeys
Balance, transfers and savings moved to the first screen. Navigation went from five levels to two. One visual language, built as a reusable system.
Re-engineer in place
A new Swift codebase, shipped screen by screen behind feature flags — no big-bang release, no frozen roadmap while we worked.
Measure and refine
Weekly releases from week three, each one instrumented. What moved the numbers stayed; what didn't was cut.
The results
Twelve weeks later,
measurably better
- 2×
- Daily active users
- 12
- Weeks, concept to App Store
- 4.9
- App Store rating
- +31%
- Average session length
Client words
Ultrabasic works like an extension of our own team. The designers who shaped the product also engineered it — and that shows in the quality of what shipped.
Peter Lawrence
Founder, Northwind
