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Zahnia Design UX
8+ years working as a UX designer and leader. I lead UX teams that fix broken user experiences in high-stakes industries banking, data security, and AI regulatory compliance. Most companies I work with start with low UX maturity and high complexity enterprise products. I work withwork with both designers and executives to fix broken experiences, align design with business goals, and ship products that work.
ENTERPRISE DESIGN • UX LEADERSHIP • DATA SECURITY • AI REGULATIONS • DATA PRIVACY • DATA RISK • BANKING • FINTECH
EXPERIENCE | DATA SECURITY
Helping IT professionals identify where their company's data was at risk and how to solve it: data visualization & design systems
I joined a low UX maturity team where we had 6 weeks to make it easier for IT Risk professionals to identify what company data was at risk, how to fix it and report on the progress to their executives.
7 minute read
EXPERIENCE | FINTECH & BANKING
Increasing customer engagement with Android and iOS native app development: Everyday banking for Canadians made easier
After years customers were frustrated with a banking app that was too slow, unintuitive and lacked what we needed. My team set out to change that by designing 2 native mobile banking apps that got the basics right.
7 minute read
EXPERIENCE | AI & DATA PRIVACY
Integrating AI features into legacy enterprise products: orchestrating consistency unifying UX teams
when taking on a new teams I found out there are 2 separate designs for the same feature weeks before the feature release! What do you do when a 2 separate teams of designers create a solution that conflict with one another? Time to create alignment and consistency
*Limited public view: details available upon request
RECENT LEARNINGS AND REFLECTIONS
I've spent the last 4 years helping scale a design team from team of 4 to team of 33. Here's what I've learned:
UX with frameworks and systems to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration
By introducing frameworks such as standardized collaboration models, shared design principles, and consistent terminology it established a UX program that brought clarity, alignment, and a common language for the project teams to do effective collaboration.
UX strategic visions helps create alignment at a project level
Crafted a strong design strategy provides designers with a clear focus and north star to ensure that day-to-day implementation decisions ladder up to a cohesive vision. A well-defined strategy translates abstract goals into actionable principles, helping teams prioritize effectively, reduce churn, and stay aligned across disciplines.
Mentoring and goal planning create confident designers
Developed individualized career paths and skill building roadmaps for designers that are supported with weekly mentorship sessions and workshops. This not only strengthened the UX practice but also fostered designer independence and confidence, enabling more effective cross-functional collaboration.
This year, I've been focusing on designing for AI Regulatory Compliance product and AI features for data privacy products. Here's what I've learned so far
Research customer's appetite for AI use across a variety of tasks and activities
Each customer will have varying temperaments on how much they want to use AI to help them and how. Different products may have customers more excited or less excited about the use of AI. Do customer research early and often.
Are you solving the right problem? Often times requests for AI features acts as a bandaid to a larger experience problem that could return more value to user and business if we solve that problem first.
True value of UX is to be able to scale design systems and patterns that efficiently solves customer problems while supporting business objectives, something that AI tools cannot recommend yet.
Are we being clear to user how AI is being used? Is it really AI?
Transparency to the user of how and when AI is being used is important in building trust with the customer and ultimately ensure we are adding value for them.
About
Hey, I'm Zahnia.
I'm a UX leader who helps companies turn confusing, hard-to-use banking, data security or AI regulatory products into simple, effective ones that people actually want to use. I work with both designers and executives to fix broken experiences, align design with business goals, and ship products that work. Over the last 8 years, I’ve helped redesign banking apps that took user ratings from 1.9/5 to 4.6/5 stars customer rating, helpscale UX teams in start ups and and helped enterprise companies with low UX maturity create product development systems that scale.
My focus is always the same: make things clearer, faster, and easier for the user and the business. Thanks for stopping by! Let’s get into the work.
*Based out of Toronto, Canada
"Good design is invisible."
Dieter Rams
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