iQ Banking Platform

JPMorgan’s front-office bankers ran their entire client workflow across a dozen disconnected tools that didn’t agree with each other. I led the information architecture for iQ, a single workspace built around the jobs bankers actually do, not the systems they were forced to stitch together. It’s now the daily home for [VERIFY: ~3,000] bankers across Commercial Banking, and every ECID request flows through it.

The problem

A banking opportunity moves through a long journey: discovery, prospecting, deal management, servicing. Bankers ran it across separate systems: one tool for discovery, Salesforce for client and deal data, RelPro for pricing and profitability, and more. The systems updated on different schedules, so the data didn’t tie out. One banker put it plainly: too many systems just to do the job. Every handoff was a context switch, the swivel-chair effect, and it didn’t scale as the business grew.

The fragmented current state: a dozen tools that didn’t agree with each other.

Reframed it from an app catalog to a jobs problem

The obvious fix, a launcher linking to every tool, would have preserved the fragmentation behind a nicer front door. Instead, my manager and I brought executive leaders, product, and engineering into a workshop and presented a target-state information architecture built on a Jobs-to-be-Done framework. That meant first educating the org on what IA is and isn’t, and building a customer journey map spanning every persona. Getting leadership to buy the frame was the unlock for everything after.

Jobs-to-be-Done mapped to an initial navigation structure.

Built the IA on how bankers actually think

The JTBD structure mapped daily work into a navigation bankers recognized: grow the portfolio, maintain a healthy portfolio, manage the relationship. As one banker said, the systems should match how bankers think rather than forcing bankers to learn out-of-the-box language.

The information architecture behind iQ’s navigation.

Validated it, hard

Open and closed card sorting, tree testing against Figma prototypes, and contextual interviews: [VERIFY: 12] 1:1 interviews and [VERIFY: 3] banker focus groups, with product and stakeholder alignment on every iteration. An MMBSI banker’s reaction to the consolidated structure: everything in one place, categories that match the daily job.

Card sorting and tree testing with bankers.

Made it durable

Navigation changes ripple across teams, so a fellow designer and I stood up a governance body spanning product design, engineering, content design, and product management, plus an intake form and a decision framework for evaluating new navigation requests. The IA could evolve without decaying back into sprawl.

The IA governance model and intake process.

Impact

[VERIFY: 3,000] unique bankers, roughly [VERIFY: 80%] of Commercial Banking headcount, adopted iQ after the May 2025 rollout. [VERIFY: 81%] user satisfaction (Q2 2025). 100% of ECID requests now run through iQ. Now scaling to Global Corporate Banking, with the navigation built to flex to their needs.

The shipped iQ workspace.

What I’d carry forward

Show, don’t tell: an artifact that makes a vision concrete wins buy-in faster than a memo. And keep testing: many PMs were former bankers who assumed they already knew the answer, but tools and processes drift, so the users have to stay in the room.