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BBVA — Global Product · Innovation · Systems

When one design has to feel local everywhere

Timeline 2015 – 2021
Role Senior Product Designer → Innovation Lead
Scale 7 countries · 20M+ users
Scope Core features · 4 innovation products
20M+ Active users across 7 markets 100+ features designed globally
7 Markets, one product Spain, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and the US
90% Component reuse Shared across all markets
The challenge

BBVA's app served 20M+ people across 7 markets, each having adapted the product independently over the years. The result was fragmentation: no shared logic, no common language, and no way to ship a global improvement without breaking what each market had built.

The work

As Senior Product Designer, later Innovation Lead, I made local adaptation systematic: UX/UI across 100+ features, plus the documentation, guidelines and design system that became the shared infrastructure. As product owner I then shipped My Trips, the Watch App and the New Landing end to end: the foundation that let eight country teams build at 90%+ component reuse.

01 · Core at scale

20 million users, 7 markets, one product

BBVA operates across seven markets: Spain, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and the US. Each brings its own regulations, competitive pressures and, more subtly, mental models around money.

Take transfers. In Spain people think in monthly cycles; in Mexico salaries are fortnightly and credit cards carry more everyday spending than debit. Same screen, but the hierarchy, defaults and language around credit had to reflect a different financial reality. Get that wrong at 20M users and it isn't a UX problem, it's a trust problem.

I worked across 100+ features (dashboard, transfers, product detail, account management) and supervised the Peru team's adaptation work. The real output wasn't the screens, it was the documentation, guidelines and frameworks that let 8 country teams reuse 90%+ of components without a central bottleneck.

02 · Innovation: My Trips

The data was already there

My Trips — lista de viajes
My Trips — detalle Ciudad de México

My Trips: tap a destination for automatic expense tracking, currency breakdown and product recommendations.

BBVA had every transaction a customer made while travelling, but users couldn't use any of it, piecing together by hand what they'd spent, in which currency, across trips. My Trips surfaced it automatically: expenses by destination, budget tracking and currency breakdown, all linked to the products they might actually need.

I led it from research to launch in Spain (August 2019). The insight: travel isn't just a moment, it's a financial context. Connecting it to BBVA's products (insurance, loans, currency conversion) turned a utility into a revenue driver.

20k+trips created in first month
+19%travel insurance purchased via My Trips
+40%loan uptake vs. app average in first month
03 · Innovation: Watch App

Banking in three seconds

Android watch — dashboard
Android watch — card detail
Apple Watch — dashboard
Apple Watch — card detail

Android watch and Apple Watch running BBVA: dashboard and product detail at a 42mm size. Dark-mode palette designed from scratch, later adopted as the mobile foundation.

The Watch app wasn't a compressed version of mobile, it meant rethinking what banking means at a glance. What does a user need to know on a 42mm screen, in the three seconds they glance at their wrist?

I led the adaptation for both Android watches and Apple Watch, designing a new dark-mode system from scratch. The 60+ components built for watchOS became the foundation for the mobile dark mode, work that compounded across the platform.

60+reusable components for Android & iOS
3core features adapted: Dashboard, Product detail and Currency converter
2markets launched in very short time (Spain & Uruguay)
04 · Innovation: Expenses Group

The loop only a bank can close

Expenses Group — create group
Expenses Group — associate transaction
Expenses Group — add expense

Expenses Group: create a group, associate real bank transactions, split and settle debts without leaving the app.

Expenses Group — user journey for clients vs non-clients

Three parallel journeys designed simultaneously, BBVA client, non-client with app, and non-client without app, each with different permissions and entry points.

Splitting expenses with friends was a solved problem: Tricount, Splitwise and Venmo all track who owes what. What none could do was close the loop, settling the debt immediately, in-app, because the money was already there. That's the one thing a bank can do that a fintech can't.

I led it from research through design. The core interaction was simple: create a group, add expenses, split them. The real complexity was invisible: not everyone in a group is a BBVA customer. So I designed three parallel experiences at once, an existing client, a non-client with the app and a non-client without it, each with different permissions, entry points and incentives to convert.

The feature shipped two to three years after I left, with small adjustments along the way. The core design held.

05 · Innovation: New Landing

One brand, seven first impressions

BBVA New Landing Screen — pre-login and personalised post-login states

Previous landing (left) and the redesigned one with personalised post-login, QR access and communication space (right).

The landing screen is the first thing a potential customer sees, and it has to convert across markets with different propositions, regulations and contexts. The challenge wasn't a good screen, it was a flexible system each market could adapt without losing the brand or the conversion logic.

I led the full experience: information architecture, user flows and visual design. The new landing added a personalised post-login state, surfaced QR operations at the entry point, and created a new communication space between BBVA and its customers that hadn't existed in the app before.

30M+users on the new landing
4countries launched: Peru, Mexico, Argentina & Spain
3×QR operations since launch
2021first launched in Peru (November)
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