Hi, this is

Shivani Sundar

I'm a

PRODUCT & SERVICE DESIGNER

When describing my job, I go with

"Simplifying complexity to make user journeys intuitive and enable people-centric decision making."

VIEW WORK →
Shivani Sundar
WHO'S THIS?

Product & experience designer

My role has always been about deeply understanding people, customers, partners or internal teams. I spend time understanding their needs, motivations and pain points, and translate that into simple, intuitive experiences that make their lives easier.

This could be improving a product, a service, or even a specific part of a journey. At the core, it's about reducing complexity and making sure the experience actually works for the user.

For me, design thinking is not just a toolkit, it's a mindset. It's about uncovering unmet needs, identifying the right problems, and ensuring that what we build is grounded in real user needs, not assumptions.

Shivani presenting at TCF25
WHAT DO I DO

Describing my work

Currently Product research & AI design at LSEG
I'm best called Empathetic designer  |  System thinker  |  Design thinker
Disciplines
Experience design Service design Product design Conversational design UX design
Tools I use Figma | Design, Miro, Mural, PPT, Perplexity, Claude
Design workshop — grey chairs collaborative session
HOW I THINK

Design think it!

Persona mapping workshop
01 — LISTEN DEEPLY

Understand the real problem

Before any brief is accepted at face value, I push to deeply understand what's really happening, from users, stakeholders, and the whole system. Uncovering unmet needs and identifying the right problems ensures that what we build is grounded in reality, not assumptions.

Facilitating journey map session
02 — CO-CREATE TOGETHER

Co-design over delivery

I bring users and stakeholders in early, not at the end. Working collaboratively across partners and customers means the solutions we develop are grounded in real needs. Improving a product, a service, or a specific part of a journey, it's always done with people, not for them.

Workshop — blue jacket facilitation session
03 — DELIVER IMPACT

Reduce complexity, build trust

Every design decision should make something easier, clearer, or less effortful. If it doesn't, it shouldn't be there. At the core, it's about reducing complexity and making sure the experience actually works for the user, in the real world, not just in the prototype.

HOW I WORK

My playbook

I don't design in a silo. I collaborate closely with a wide range of stakeholders and apply the tools and methods that will deliver the greatest impact and ROI. Sometimes, that also means reframing or renaming design methods to better align with a company's existing language and culture, making the process feel more accessible rather than overwhelming.

Shivani's design process — double diamond
HOW IT'S PERCEIVED

People say

Avinash Kumar
Avinash Kumar Line Manager Product & technology leader

I hired Shivani at Temenos in 2023 to own and evolve user experience for Temenos' next gen core banking SaaS platform. Shivani not only demonstrated her UX skills quickly, but also brought business value by understanding business and customer pain points, frictions in SaaS lifecycle and proposing solutions for business and operational optimisation. She is highly skilled in service design frameworks and methodologies and her interpersonal, team and collaboration skills are commendable. Shivani is a pleasure to work with, and I would highly recommend her to anyone wanting to setup and/ or scale service design/ UX function.

Erik Johnson
Erik Johnson Line Manager Head of Design, Temenos

I had the pleasure of managing Shiv during her time at Temenos, and I would gladly work with her again. Shiv brings deep expertise in Service Design and Design Thinking, paired with a genuine commitment to continuous learning. She was also one of our most trusted facilitators. I would confidently put Shiv in front of senior banking executives and cross-disciplinary leadership teams, knowing she could navigate complex conversations, strong personalities, and ambiguous problem spaces with professionalism and clarity. Shiv is an exceptional designer, collaborator, and leader and any organization would be lucky to have her.

Sofia Moschou
Sofia Moschou Senior Team Lead Senior AI Manager, LSEG

Shiv ran one of the best-run internal events in LSEG. The flow was well prepared & Shiv brought brought in full ownership to the event lifecycle. She organised SME prep sessions, outlined the importance of design methods & made us comfortable to co-facilitate roundtables. Her communication is always clear, timely & considerate. She gave contributors the right level of context without overwhelming them. Her passion for design & people is what differentiates her. She is very proactive & actively seeks feedback, which shows her commitment to learning & self-improvement

James Galassi
James Galassi Project Lead Head of Retail, Temenos

Shiv is an amazing addition to a team that wants to drive the customer and market thinking into product development. She developed and ran four Design Thinking, 2 day workshops for me on AI and composable banking during 2025 and calmly and confidently used her Design Thinking expertise to guide groups of 20+ people to take an outside-in and data driven approach to solve problems. The analysis and recommendations following the workshops were also excellent and enabled me to refine my thinking and roadmaps. I wish Shiv was still working with me.

1 / 4
SELECTED WORK

Case studies

Temenos Modularity
Service Design Banking SaaS 2025

Temenos Modularity

Transforming a failing product concept into a co-designed modular strategy — by rebuilding with partners and customers, not just for them.

Read case study →
Vandals
Experience Design Startup 2024–2025

Vandals

Re-designing how a strategic design service provider communicates intangible value, structures client engagement, and builds trust without relying on a traditional portfolio.

Read case study →
Credem Digital App
UX Design Digital Banking 2025

Credem Digital App

Redesigning a one-size-fits-all banking app into a persona-driven experience balancing Gen Z expectations with boomer familiarity.

Read case study →
Temenos Banking Copilot
AI Experience Design Banking 2025

Temenos Banking Copilot

Reframing an AI mandate from "let's use AI" into a meaningful product — finding where AI genuinely reduces effort for product managers.

Read case study →

Selected
case studies

Each project follows the same thread: start with the real problem, work closely with users and partners, and only build what genuinely helps.

Temenos Modularity
Service Design Banking SaaS 2025

Temenos Modularity

Transforming a failing product concept into a co-designed modular strategy — by rebuilding with partners and customers, not just for them.

Read case study →
Vandals
Experience Design Startup 2024–2025

Vandals

Re-designing how a strategic design service provider communicates intangible value, structures client engagement, and builds trust without relying on a traditional portfolio.

Read case study →
Credem Digital App
UX Design Digital Banking 2025

Credem Digital App

Redesigning a one-size-fits-all banking app into a persona-driven experience balancing Gen Z expectations with boomer familiarity.

Read case study →
Temenos Banking Copilot
AI Experience Design Banking 2025

Temenos Banking Copilot

Reframing an AI mandate from "let's use AI" into a meaningful product — finding where AI genuinely reduces effort for product managers.

Read case study →
← Back to work

Enhancing partner & customer trust by building true SaaS modular services

Transforming a failing product concept into a credible, co-designed strategy, by rebuilding it from the ground up with partners and customers, not just for them.

Year 2025
Company Temenos
Discipline Service design | Design strategy
Partners involved Deloitte, IBM, Raiffeisen Bank
Temenos Updated Value Proposition on screens
PROBLEM

We were trying to sell modularity without actually delivering it

Temenos has traditionally offered core banking as a full-suite product, but not every bank wants or needs the entire stack. There was a push to break this into modular, plug-and-play capabilities but the earlier attempt, Temenos Banking Capabilities, had failed.

"We were trying to sell modularity without actually delivering a modular, partner-friendly, SaaS-like experience."
  • The modules weren't truly modular, tightly coupled to core, leading to instability
  • Documentation wasn't fit for purpose , it was reused from core, not tailored to personas
  • Integration into bank ecosystems wasn't seamless, there were gaps in UI, APIs & interoperability
  • The experience didn't feel like true SaaS, it was too complex, too heavy, not plug-and-play
  • Customers wanted a phased, low-risk approach, not a full core replacement
PROCESS

Co-design program with 2 lenses — Partner & customer

We launched Temenos Modularity as a co-design program in 2025 to fix this — by getting closer to both partners and customers. The approach had two lenses: partners (implementation focus) and customers (adoption and business value focus).

Partner workshop — sticky note wall
STEP 01

Internal alignment

Before going out, we aligned internally on:

  • Existing architecture and known limitations
  • Why the previous approach failed
  • Key personas across partners and banks
Post-it notes from partner workshop
STEP 02

Partner workshops

We ran deep-dive sessions to understand:

  • Market demand for modular services
  • Pain points in implementation (especially from the previous attempt)
  • Gaps in Temenos support (tools, documentation, collaboration), current engagement and delivery models
Customer co-design session with Raiffeisen Bank
STEP 03

Customer co-design

We worked with Raiffeisen Bank (across Slovakia, Albania, Croatia) to understand:

  • Their business and technology strategy
  • How they evaluate and select vendors,
  • Their current journey with Temenos and partners
  • What capabilities they expect from a vendor (integration, documentation, support, etc.,)
Synthesis diagram — stakeholder map
STEP 04

Synthesis to strategy

  • Reframed the modularity value proposition
  • Defined new technical and non-technical capabilities
  • Built a partner engagement model
  • Created persona-based documentation and integration guidance
  • Addressed architectural gaps to make modules core agnostic
IMPACT

From assumption led to insight-led strategy

  • We developed a much deeper understanding of both partners and customers
  • We repositioned Temenos as an enabler of bank strategy, not just a software vendor
  • We made modularity more practical, implementable, and partner-friendly
Refined technical direction

Focus on true modular architecture, Core-agnostic design, cleaner APIs, Low-risk modernisation approach and SaaS-aligned experience, with new capabilities

Customers to ambassadors

Raiffeisen Bank became a co-design partner and early adopter ( 3 deal signatures)

Stronger partner trust

Deloitte and IBM signed on as modularity partners ( 2 deal signatures) & a new Partner-Temenos engagement model was built

Team at Deloitte Digital partner workshop
Previous ← Banking Copilot
Next Vandals →
← Back to work

Re-designing Vandals' client experience & communication strategy

Redesigning how a strategic design service provider communicates intangible value, structures client engagement, and builds trust without relying on a traditional portfolio.

Year 2024–2025
Company Freelance
Discipline Experience design
Partners involved Vandals
Vandals LinkedIn profile on iPad
PROBLEM

How do you sell something even if you can't show?

Vandals is a Barcelona-based strategic design service provider known for research-driven, collaborative transformation projects across multiple industries. They attract clients through referrals, partnerships, and events but most of their work sits behind NDA agreements.

They needed a way to communicate intangible impact without compromising confidentiality.

"How might we communicate the value of strategic design in a way that builds trust, simplifies complex offerings, and creates stronger engagement with prospective clients?"
  • Users appreciated the creative identity but struggled to understand the breadth of services
  • Prospective clients often didn't know how to articulate what they actually needed
  • There was no structured touchpoint to translate strategic design into business language
  • Lack of clarity on what prospects were looking for in design service providers
  • Hard to demonstrate strategic thinking, facilitation, and systems-level problem solving through portfolio
PROCESS

Looking outside design to understand trust

We approached this as an end-to-end experience strategy project — redesigning how Vandals communicated, onboarded, and engaged with clients across both digital and non-digital touchpoints. The process had three distinct phases.

Usability testing results table
STEP 01

Current digital presence

  • Analysed Vandals' existing communication ecosystem — website, LinkedIn, onboarding journeys, consultation flows, and competitor positioning.
  • Ran usability testing with three personas: prospective clients, HR and business stakeholders, and designers exploring partnerships. The research revealed that cognitive load and lack of clarity were the biggest barriers to conversion.
Mystery shopping journey map across trust-based industries
STEP 02

Mystery shopping across trust-based industries

  • Since Vandals operates similarly to other expertise-led service providers, I conducted mystery shopping across legal firms, investment consultants, therapists, coaches, and mentors.
  • The key insight: successful providers focused less on outputs and more on communicating their mindset, process, and ability to make clients feel understood. This became the strategic direction.
Competitor positioning chart — Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create
STEP 03

Where are the competitors playing?

  • Scanned the competitors' digital presence, communication strategy & the breadth of services.
  • They showcasing working culture and principles, ensured transparency in design process & showcased their service journey. These were attributes Vandals wanted to inculcate & eliminate the need to show portfolios like competitors did.
Bar chart — Key Strengths of the Design Agency based on Client Feedback
STEP 04

What do our clients feel?

  • We also surveyed existing clients to understand: Why they initially approached Vandals, What created trust during engagements, What they valued most about Vandals etc.,
  • The insights emerged shaped the direction: "We would like to see their work in internet more often, Clearly explain the purpose and outcomes of each exercise, visually communicate pricing adaptability"
End-to-end service journey map on post-it board
STEP 05

Articulating service journeys

  • Using insights from usability testing, surveys, mystery shopping, and competitor analysis, I mapped an end-to-end service journey to be used during initial client engagements.
  • The visual was designed to clearly showcase how Vandals works, highlighting key touchpoints, engagement stages, and collaboration methods upfront.
Design Therapy — pre-diagnosis form, prescription, and LinkedIn profile
STEP 06

Prototyping empathetic experiences

  • One of the most significant concepts to emerge was Design Therapy — reframing the initial consultation from a sales conversation into a collaborative diagnosis.
  • Inspired by therapy and coaching engagement models, the experience focused on listening deeply & building emotional trust early. I designed pre-diagnosis forms, consultation frameworks, and "design prescriptions"
IMPACT

From portfolio-led to empathy-led consultation

  • The project shifted Vandals' communication model from a traditional portfolio-led approach into a more human-centred, trust-driven experience. The redesigned strategy helped clarify their value proposition and repositioned the design service provider as a strategic partner rather than a traditional design studio.
  • It demonstrated how strategic design services could be communicated through empathy, storytelling, facilitation, and process rather than confidential deliverables alone
Stronger emotional engagement

The redesigned communication strategy created: Clearer articulation of the agency's value proposition, More empathetic onboarding experiences, Better communication of strategic thinking and collaboration

Strategic design made approachable

Clear transparency on what they are signing up for. Reducing cognitive load in understanding design language. Creating stronger trust-building moments

High digital discoveries

Strengthened Vandals' digital presence and thought leadership communication, contributing to increased engagement across LinkedIn and other channels.

Vandals team co-design session in Barcelona
Previous ← SaaS Modularity
Next Credem Digital App →
← Back to work

Improving 30% user engagement in a persona-driven retail app

Evolving a one-size-fits-all banking app into a persona-driven experience that genuinely serves both Gen Z and boomer users, while simplifying how banks customise and build on top of it.

Year 2025
Company Temenos
Discipline UX design | Design thinking
Partners involved Credem banca, Italy
Credem digital banking app — 6 phone screens showing different features
PROBLEM

A one-size-fits-all product that banks couldn't sell

Temenos Infinity was designed as a plug and play digital banking app, but in reality, it was too generic.

It functioned as a one size fits all SaaS product with no real persona specific experiences. Banks had to heavily customise the UI to make it usable for their customers.

''How might we redesign the digital banking experience to balance traditional and modern user needs, while also making it easier for banks to customise and deliver that experience?''
  • Gen Z users who expect modern, engaging, app-like experiences similar to Revolut
  • Boomer users who prefer familiar, stable and easy-to-understand flows
  • Limited personalisation and no progressive discovery of features
  • Poor navigation and findability across both personas & lack of quick actions
  • Developer experience in Temenos Quantum was complex and friction-heavy
PROCESS

Co-design from the inside out

We approached this as a co design engagement with the bank, using design as a tool to deeply understand both end user and developer needs.

Internal journey mapping — Temenos app flows and AI capabilities
STEP 01

Internal understanding

Before engaging the bank, we,

  • Mapped current user flows in the standard Temenos app versus the bank's customised version.
  • Reviewed AI capabilities on the product roadmap, spoke to designers who had previously worked on the bank's implementation
  • Identified gaps between out of the box features & usage.
Gen Z and Boomer opportunities — ranked feature categories
STEP 02

Co-design workshops — two days on-site

We ran two-day workshops on-site with multiple stakeholders. We defined the two personas (Gen Z and Boomer), mapped customer pain points from bank research, and generated two clear HMW challenges:

  • Creating a Revolut-like experience for Gen Z
  • Preserving familiarity for boomers while enabling new features.
Ideation sketches — investment help for boomers and portfolio wireframe
STEP 03

Ideation and prioritisation

We generated feature ideas across both personas

  • gamified savings (piggy-based savings), social leaderboards for Gen Z
  • AI-assisted financial guidance, smart reminders for boomers.
  • We evaluated where AI could add value, prioritised using desirability, business viability and feasibility, and created low-fidelity prototypes for key concepts.
Developer usability testing — Temenos Quantum grouping flow and observations
STEP 04

Developer usability testing

In parallel, we focused on bank side developers who customise the app.

  • We conducted usability testing on Temenos Quantum, the UI customisation tool, and identified friction in how developers modify UI, implement features and work within existing constraints.
IMPACT

From generic to persona-driven at every level

  • We moved from a generic, one size fits all digital app to a more persona driven, customisable and modern banking experience, while also simplifying how banks build on top of it.
Better NPS

The bank gained clarity on what to build versus what Temenos should provide. They bought into the concepts and became co design partners for future features

Roadmap shaken

The work influenced the digital banking product roadmap with persona driven features. It introduced modern capabilities grounded in real user needs

Improving persona experiences

Gaps in developer experience, gave rise to Conversational Studio— UI customisation tool inspired by modern tools like Lovable and Replit, to aid developers to build UI easily

Co-design workshop — presenting Gen Z and Boomer themes to stakeholders
Previous ← Vandals
Next Banking Copilot →
← Back to work

Building AI experiences that are valuable than yet another chatbot

Reframing an AI mandate from "let's use AI in our products" into an experience that actually solves real problems by finding where AI genuinely reduces effort, not just where it can be applied.

Year 2025
Company Temenos
Discipline Conversational design | UX
Partners involved BIL, Commerce bank
Temenos Core Copilot on iMac screen
PROBLEM

A mandate to "use AI" ,without asking why

Temenos had a mandate to leverage its partnership with Microsoft to build more AI-driven retail products.

But very quickly, we realised that the direction felt off. It was: "Let's use AI in our products" instead of: "What do our users actually need, and does AI even make sense there?"

There was a real risk of just defaulting to a chatbot without actually solving anything meaningful. So we reframed the problem. We focused on one key persona to start with: Product Managers (both functional and technical) who use Transact to build and launch banking products.

''What are the actual pain points in Temenos Transact, and where does AI genuinely help versus where it doesn't?''
  • The product supports technical product managers but not functional product owners
  • They rely heavily on SQL queries, internal knowledge, and support teams
  • A lot of their work before that (ideation, validation, decision making) is completely manual
  • The overall experience is quite heavy and fragmented
  • The product only really supports them during implementation & not in other phases
PROCESS

Kept the BRD's out of sight

We were intentional about not jumping into solutions. Instead of defining features, we focused on understanding users — and only brought in AI where it actually reduced effort

Technical Bank Admin and Functional Bank Admin personas document
STEP 01

Reset internally

  • We actually paused the Business Requirements Document completely. Instead of defining features, we focused on understanding users.
  • We spoke to internal product experts, mapped current journeys for Functional PMs and Technical PMs, created proto personas, and looked at AI feasibility separately without letting it drive decisions.
Persona mapping wall — Alex and Laura sticky note boards
STEP 02

Co-design with banks across Europe and the US

  • We worked closely with BIL Bank and Commerce Bank: validated the personas, mapped their full journey from product idea to launch, and identified where the real gaps were.
  • For functional PMs: hard to get data without SQL, no support understanding regulatory impact.
  • For technical PMs: complex architecture language, painful integrations, time-consuming debugging.
Co-design session — presenting journey to stakeholders
STEP 03

Ideation and prioritisation

  • We spotted patterns and turned them into real scenarios. For example: after a release, if something breaks, PMs have to manually go through reports and logs.
  • We storyboarded these moments and identified where help was actually needed, distinguishing product bugs from genuine AI opportunities.
User Goals vs. Usefulness — AI use case evaluation table
STEP 04

Validating AI usecases

  • Once we had all the insights: Some things were clearly just product issues or bugs, sent to support teams
  • Some things didn't need AI at all
  • And some areas were strong candidates for AI. We mapped user goals and went back to customers to score these ideas based on usefulness. We focused on simple, real scenarios
Conversation design diagram — Natural language understanding and creation cycle
STEP 05

Led AI and conversational design

  • I led the AI and conversational design for this. I took user goals and converted them into jobs-to-be-done. Instead of writing prompts, I created sample conversations.
  • I defined the AI's behaviour, tone, and role, focusing on reducing cognitive load, building trust, and not overwhelming the user. I also ran sessions to upskill designers on conversational design.
New chat multi-variate testing — 4 layout variations
STEP 06

3 months of continuous testing and refinement

  • This was heavily co-designed with customers from day one.
  • We tested early concepts and prototypes, iterating on prompt guidance, how much help to show, where the chat sits in the UI, and making sure it didn't clash with the existing product. Showcased at the Temenos Community Forum customers became ambassadors.
IMPACT

Leveraging Microsoft's partnership to build sticky AI experiences

  • We ended up designing an AI experience that actually fits into a very complex product without making it harder to use. Customers became co-design partners and early adopters , they bought into the solution because they helped shape it.
  • We moved from "let's build something with AI" to actually solving real user problems, and only using AI where it made the experience simpler and more useful.
Improved productivity

Ticket resolution time reduced by 50 percent. Product development lifecycle improved by 30 percent. Reduced reliance on support teams

Unlocking new revenue streams

Customers became co-design partners and early adopters, bringing in new revenue. They went up the stage in TCF to vouch for the product

Journey driven product design

Helping across the full product lifecycle, not just implementation. Kick-started Phase 2 to support branch user personas

Team co-design session — banking copilot workshop
Previous ← Credem Digital App
Next Temenos Modularity →
Get in touch

Let's work
together

I'm open to new projects, collaborations, and conversations. Whether you have a brief ready or just an idea, I'd love to hear from you.

hello@shivanisundar.com LinkedIn →
What I can help with
  • —Service and experience design engagements
  • —Discovery research and insight synthesis
  • —AI experience and conversational design
  • —Co-design facilitation and workshop design
  • —Design strategy and reframing the problem