Viktoriia Chistiakova Product Designer

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`Designing Banking Infrastructure from Scratch`

Designed the full banking ecosystem from scratch: KYC-compliant onboarding, card issuing, SWIFT transfers, and operational tools for a regulated financial product — all as the solo designer.

INDUSTRY:

FINTECH

YEAR:

2023

EXPERIENCE:

PRODUCT DESIGN

01. Context

Sber is Russia's largest bank with 100M+ active retail clients. Even minor user experience issues result in millions of support requests annually.

Sber has built a digital ecosystem where the Salyut voice assistant connects smart devices (TVs, speakers, tablets), smart home, and banking services. In the SberBank Online mobile app, users can manage their finances by voice – check balances, make transfers, and pay bills.

My role – Product Designer in the Customer Wallet tribe. I designed self-service banking features that reduce support load and give users more autonomy and clarity.

Sber is Russia's largest bank with 100M+ active retail clients. Even minor user experience issues result in millions of support requests annually.

My role – Product Designer in the Customer Wallet tribe. I designed self-service banking features that reduce support load and give users more autonomy and clarity.

02. The challenge

Card blocking is critical and often needed in inconvenient moments – driving, in panic, or away from the phone. The app handles most scenarios, but support tickets revealed a gap: users still call the contact center when reaching the app is hard, spending 5+ minutes on hold and ID checks.

Sber was developing the Salyut voice assistant ecosystem (smart speakers, in-car integration, SberBoom devices). The opportunity: extend card blocking into voice, so users could act the moment they need to – hands-free, instantly, by command.

The challenge: design this for one of the most sensitive banking operations, when the user's money is at stake.

03. Discovery

To understand how users interact with voice assistants in critical situations, I conducted discovery research including interviews and usability testing. This revealed key barriers: deep distrust of voice technology from past frustrating experiences, and fundamental misunderstandings about what "blocking" means.

Based on the research, I defined both problem and solution hypotheses. I assumed that users struggled to manage tariffs because there was no single interface and they depended on the backend team. Giving users the ability to add and manage data about clients, contracts, and tariff grids in one place — with a clear hierarchy and access restrictions – would reduce mistakes and make them fully autonomous.

When I called (SberNumber), sometimes the assistants are too scripted, and they might not understand something, which is inconvenient.

"I prefer doing things manually. My daughter uses voice control, but I don't." Voice assistants perceived as toys, not serious tools.

Two respondents used voice control only in navigation (Yandex Maps): "I see voice control as a gimmick."

Another viewed Siri as a toy: "It misunderstands, and I have to redo things. The technology is still at a low level."

04. about

Alfa Bank is Russia's largest private bank and a leading financial institution in Eastern Europe. The bank manages $61B in assets, serves 14.3M individuals and 334K corporate clients, offering everything from retail and digital banking to corporate and investment services.

[ 01 ]

The Corporate & Investment Banking segment

CIB serves large corporate holdings (groups of related companies under one parent) – one of Alfa Bank's most profitable verticals, driving significant share of revenue.

[ 02 ]

My role

Sole Product Designer in the product team. Owned design end-to-end on a 0-to-1 platform, from research to launch, working with PM, business stakeholders, and engineering.

/ In the numbers

combined client valuation

products brought to market

Fortune 500 clients

accolades/awards