2019
The opportunity
Dubai First (DF) is a credit card and consumer finance company that was acquired by First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB). Becoming part of FAB, meant the DF app had to deliver quality experience standards.
Goals
To create a new experience for DF customers with new features, better performance and experience through their mobile app.
My Role
I lead the experience strategy, product roadmap, and design for the new app.
Also the creation of a design system. The design team consisted of 3 designers.
The previous Dubai First app
When my team and I took over the project we encountered the below app.
Research
Research was conducted to find out which features would interest users more. The interviewees were given various options of features that may be implemented in the future to prioritize.
Interviewees had to choose how much they would pay for each feature and which one they envisaged using the most, and why.
Design System
One of the first things we decided to work on, was the libraries that will be used to create the design system. Having a robust design system would allow us to work faster and have consistency across all DF's products.
This would also help us to resuse elements when moving to other projects across First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), as there were similarities between their products.
Designs
Taking the research into consideration, we focused on the app’s features that the customers felt were most relevant whilst also making sure the developments made sense for the business.
Illustrations
We created a unique design style that was incorporated into the Dubai First brand language. We used these illustrations to inform the user.
Final thoughts
This was a huge leap forward for FAB, with an app that delivered a much better user experience to it's users, also helped to align different departments, to accomplish more.
The most challenging part wasn't designing the product itself but, aligning all the different departments, as they were working on silos. So having those different parts, became the most important priority. This shows that communication and collaboration, are key when building products.
Isaac Vigil © 2025