Company
$171m+ in 2021
1250+ employees
Finance
Internal
Rwanda
Team
5
UX/UI designers
1
Senior Project Manager
1
Front-end developer
1
Product strategist
2
Client Managers
A key part of our partnership with Bank of Kigali (BK) is advancing the organisation’s progress in instilling a culture of user-centric banking.
From enriching an enthusiastic design team with modern best practice o sharing expert insights with the C-suite, we’re onboard to help everyone at BK along their journey to UX maturity.
Bringing design thinking into our world is a revolution as it’s not something that most people here have been taught. Having a partnership like this one where people understand how important design is in everything we do is really going to change our business.
Shaping a high-functioning team
We’re not just focused on designing products and services at Lighthouse. Helping businesses and teams grow with product-focused training and mentoring is something we’re passionate about.
Product design as a discipline is relatively new in Rwanda, and there aren’t many senior designers (yet!).
BK’s product team were keen to expand their knowledge and understanding of the processes and techniques used by the highest-functioning product teams internationally.
Our UX training programme for them comprises multiple streams, all designed to produce a well-structured, high-performing product team. Our activities include:
Individual mentoring
Matching BK designers with our senior UXers for one to one review sessions, giving suggestions and promoting their personal development.
Design skills
Levelled up by team in first 12 months
23
Group training
A collaborative, practical and fun year-long course covering essential UX skills. Our training suits team members with a variety of different starting skill sets.
Working with Lighthouse has helped our team build a better working relationship through critique sessions and workshops. This is something we struggled with in the past (team work) but that has improved tremendously
Average rating
Rated by BK Team across content and delivery
5/5
Wider team talks
Speaking to the wider team on higher level industry trends. This is key for generating excitement for user-centric banking across the organisation and helping our internal champions spread the message.
Designing processes
It’s not just our UX designers who’re involved with this upskilling work. Our senior project manager has helped implement an Agile methodology, and our frontend developer has been instrumental in bringing up to the minute, accessible thinking to the BK engineers’ framework.
The quality of the products have greatly improved, and have provided leadership and agile project management skills to the team
The value of upskilling a UX team
As well as the inherent value of bringing a focus on user-centricity to the organisation, BK have been reaping the benefits of their investment by retaining upskilled team members.
Thanks to our training programme, employees who have been offered other roles have chosen to stay at the bank because of the value they place in their relationship with Lighthouse.
In addition, UX training from a globally recognised agency has boosted BK’s recruitment, attracting high-quality talent as they build teams further.
The team are learning so much. We’re very proud and excited about what we’re doing.
In-person collaboration
Whilst we achieved a solid 18 months of collaboration entirely online, across time zones and over 4000 miles, travelling to Kigali in order to supercharge our engagement with real-life activities was a great moment.
During our first trip we were based in BK’s Digital Factory office all week, and were able to run workshops and training with a hugely engaged team. We saw their learning accelerate enormously during that time.
This upskilling user-centricity work really comes into its own with real-life face time.
UX agency WLTM international client: how we rediscovered the joy of IRL work
Read all about our real-life collaboration with the BK team
A modern, user-centric bank
Our work advances the UX maturity of the whole of Bank of Kigali, bringing a sophisticated, up to the moment outlook on how design impacts every area of the bank’s activities.
When a C-suite committed to user-centric banking and an expert agency get together, great things happen.
Putting the customer at the centre of everything we do is going to change how we do business. We want to have this at the core of our culture.