enterprise mobile app • product design • UX
Market Position
#3 private bank in India
$180 Bil in assets
50 Mil customers
104,500 employees
5,427 branches
Known for digital banking &
customer-focus
In November 2020, the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns pushed Axis Bank India to transition over 80% of their workforce to a work-from-home model.
They needed to find a way to have undisrupted remote work operations for about 100K employees during the lockdown.
Axis Bank did have an existing enterprise app but it failed to meet the challenge and created more problems than it solved.
My Role
Lead product design from discovery to handoff.
Conduct workshops to inform strategy and product roadmap,
Manage stakeholder communications.
Team
Ravi Singh Product manager, Deputy Vice President HR, Axis Bank
Asim Sayed Product design lead
Rhea Makhija UX intern
Timeline
3 months
Oct 2020 - Dec 2020
outcome
⚡ 15,000+ stories posted
⚡ 90% adoption
⚡ Countless minutes saved everyday
A secure and smooth transition to working remotely for bank employees
How might we enable essential organizational functions, promote productivity and connectivity for Axis Bank employees in a work from home environment?
🌐 Urgent Remote Work Adaptation
The sudden shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic required a robust platform to maintain employee connectivity and productivity.
⛓️ Fragmented User Experience
The old app was a patchwork of 41 distinct modules, functioning independently without a unified experience.
🧱 Limited Scalability
The existing app architecture could not support the expanded functionalities required for remote operations.
📝 Inefficient Workflows
Many employee processes were tedious, involving long, complex forms and unclear instructions.
Showcase #01
Essential remote work function
Leave and attendance module
Two-Step Attendance: Balancing Security and Simplicity
We planned a two-step attendance system. First, the app checks your GPS to confirm you’re at the office. Next, you’d scan a code—like swiping an access card.
But tech can surprise you. We needed a robust encryption-decryption setup for 100,000+ unique private keys for employees and 5,000+ public keys for each bank branch. That was tough. So, for our first release, we stuck with GPS-based attendance.
Marking attendance
happy path
A Touch-Free Arrival
at the Office
You arrive at 9:00 a.m. sharp and stand at the office gate.
With COVID, fingerprint scanners and ID taps on shared surfaces are off the table.
You take out your phone, open the app, and there it is—a quick tap to log your attendance and step inside.
Marking attendance
failure path
When GPS Fails
When GPS permissions are off, or you're working from home, “tap and mark” attendance might not work.
We knew the system wouldn’t be flawless from the start, so we built a smooth regularization process to quickly resolve issues and keep the system running seamlessly.
Marking attendance
edge cases
Adjust Work Hours with Ease
Sometimes employees need extra time or prefer to work a half-day. The system allows seamless adjustments to in-out times for remote work.
For longer workdays, additional hours are logged automatically. If hours fall short, the system prompts a nudge to apply for a half-day.
Solution highlight #2
Calendar design and leave request
An intuitive clutter-free calendar
We had over 20 attendance categories, including new ones like “Precautionary Leave” and “Work from Home.”
The challenge was to display all these different events clearly on the calendar without it looking like a colour palette or a cryptic puzzle of icons.
calendar design
4 Icons, 30+ States
I wanted icons that were simple, meaningful, and flexible for future updates.
The key was seeing the final outcome — either the user is present or not. But we also needed an “in-between” state for company verification.
You know how WhatsApp shows one tick for delivered and two ticks for read? People get that.
calendar design
We designed four icons to cover over 30 states
creating event requests
Selecting a range for attendance regularization
We learned users struggled to request multiple-day leaves or work-from-home. They had to apply one day at a time.
So we implemented a tap-based system. Choose your start date, then choose your end date, and you’re done.
Applying for leave
Know your teammates’ wellbeing
Everyone felt disconnected and knew little about their colleagues. To foster shared accountability and care for each other’s wellbeing, we showed which teammates were on leave during the same period.
Daily productivity
Starting Your Day with a Win
I believed we could do more with daily attendance
People thrive on routines that set them up for productivity. A small reminder from the previous day could have helped them start strong.
It’s a bummer, this thing was shot down due to tight deadlines.
Showcase #02
Improving productivity
Manager approvals module
All requests in one place
Remote work added new hassles for Axis Bank managers. We observed, on average, each manager handled 15 requests a day, taking anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours across different modules.
So we asked, how might we streamline the manager’s request approval process to enable quicker and more efficient action?
Request Management
Find the most frequent requests—all in one place
We discovered that managers spent too much time navigating separate modules for each request type.
So we built a single, consistent interface that displays every request in one easy-to-scan view. This design is flexible enough to support new request types, showing the most important details at a glance.
Request Management
Customise views with date, status, and people
Requests can be filtered by date to focus on specific timeframes, by status to display approved or pending items, and by team members to locate individual submissions quickly.
This approach saves time and maintains focus on what matters most.
faster Request Management
Swipe for faster interaction
Research showed that managers needed a quicker way to approve individual requests. Swiping left or right removes extra taps, saving time on each approval.
multiple Request Management
Manage requests in bulk
From user interviews, managers often faced multiple approvals at once.
Bulk actions let them select several requests and approve or reject them in one go, drastically saving time.
Showcase #03
promoting connectedness
ONE AXIS MODULE
One unified community space
During the sudden transition to remote work, employee well-being became a top priority. Staying connected was essential for morale, team cohesion, and productivity—all critical factors for keeping Axis Bank’s workforce engaged and supported from a distance.
The original app had features like Champions Awards (to celebrate company values), travel blogs, media posts, and a forum, but each lived in its own silo. We set out to merge these modules into a single, organized section, making it easier for employees to interact, engage, and celebrate together.
That’s how “One Axis” came to life—a space made just for Axis employees
Sure, teams might still have WhatsApp groups and Microsoft Teams chat, but this new platform is where they truly come together as one big family.
Social Interaction
Share Updates and Celebrate Together
The One Axis social feed is where employees share updates, celebrate milestones, and interact through comments. It blends personal and professional moments.
It’s where connections begin and lead seamlessly into other features.
Contextual Access Points
Sneak peak people’s detail
Profile Quick Peak mechanism can be invoked anywhere a name or photo appears in the app—on a Social Feed post, in a search result, or a notification—a Quick Peek reveals key details like role, contact info, and recent achievements.
This keeps interactions smooth and eliminates the need to leave the current screen.
Unified Profile Experience
Know your people better
From the Quick Peek, a pull-up or tap opens the full Profile Card. It’s a detailed but simple view that ties together professional data, achievements, and personal highlights. This creates a more complete understanding of each colleague.
Hierarchical Visualization
Understand Team Structures at a Glance
From the Profile Card, navigate to the Organization view. It visualizes reporting lines and team structures in a clear, interactive hierarchy.
This makes it easy to see how individuals and teams connect across the organization.
Impact
measurable outcomes
immeasurable impact
impressions
In the midst of covid, the One Axis app became a space
for the community to come together and offer help.
15,000+
stories posted
90%
Adoption
∞
Countless minutes
saved everyday
🙌
Ravi Singh
Deputy Vice President, Axis Bank
Digital transformation, ux, strategy
2020
Enabling 2M+ insurance policy holders access services online
research, ux, strategy
2019