Mara Vance

Work/Meridian OS

02

Meridian OS

Operating system for a small lending bank.

Meridian OS
Client
Meridian Bank
Role
Product Design Lead
Discipline
Product · Fintech
Timeline
9 months
Year
2024

Tools

Figma · Linear · Storybook

[ 01 ] The brief

A complete redesign of the internal loan origination platform used by 40 lending officers across three offices. Replaced six legacy tools with one calm, opinionated workspace.

Loan officers were juggling six pieces of software, three spreadsheets, and a printed checklist to close a single deal. Errors were creeping in. Onboarding new staff took 11 weeks.

[ 02 ] Approach

  1. 01

    Shadowed five officers for a week before sketching anything. The real work happened in the gaps between the tools, not inside them.

  2. 02

    Designed around the deal, not the database — every screen surfaces the question the officer is answering right now.

  3. 03

    Built a component library with the engineering team in parallel, so the design and the code shipped as one thing.

[ 03 ] Selected screens

Deal workspace

FIG. 01

Deal workspace

Pipeline view
Mobile review
FIG. 02Pipeline view
FIG. 03Mobile review

[ 04 ] Decisions

  • One screen per decision

    Multi-tab dashboards were replaced with a focused work surface. Context lives in the rail; the centre is for action.

  • Keyboard-first

    Every action has a shortcut. Officers asked for a mouse-free flow on day three, and we built the whole thing around it.

  • Audit trail as design material

    The compliance log isn't hidden in a settings page — it sits in the margin of every deal, legible at a glance.

[ 05 ] Outcomes

  • 01

    Time-to-close dropped from 14 days to 6 days on average.

  • 02

    Onboarding time for new officers fell from 11 weeks to 4 weeks.

  • 03

    Zero compliance incidents in the first nine months post-launch.

[ 06 ] Adjacent work

← All work

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