Building a Scalable Service Design Framework

How do you create a shared design language inside one of Central Europe’s biggest banking groups? Following OTP Bank’s agile transformation, design practices had emerged across teams — but applied with different levels of maturity, and mostly championed by design-minded individuals. It lacked system-wide consistency. Without a unified methodology, collaboration was uneven, impact diluted, and momentum fragile. As a core member of the bank’s CoE Service Design group and CX stream, I co-initiated a transformative project: to co-develop a research-driven, modular framework that could embed human-centred design across the bank’s operations — and eventually across in the OTP Group, spanning 11 countries.

How might we make service design accessible, adaptable, and scalable in a complex financial organisation — while maintaining methodological quality and impact?

We didn’t want a top-down process dropped onto teams — we wanted a co-created, living system. Working closely with Exalt Interactive, SD group, Research unit, and stakeholders from across business units, we ran deep diagnostics on how different teams understood and applied design. We facilitated workshops, co-creation sessions, and prototype tests of tools and frameworks. The result: a flexible system that adapts to different design maturities and real-world constraints.

• Co-initiated and shaped the design process framework programme — to build a shared foundation for service design maturity

• Co-led research and participatory discovery — exploring how different teams interpret and apply design in their daily work, to surface diverse needs and inform the creation of an adaptable framework tailored to varying contexts and maturity levels. The process was also designed to intentionally activate awareness, foster shared understanding, and lay the groundwork for participatory adoption across departments.

• Designed the OTP Design Process Canvas — a DT-based, modular framework enabling scalable, consistent SD/UX/CX collaboration

• Facilitated capability-building — created and delivered internal training, including Design Thinking presentations, Canvas walkthroughs, and onboarding to embed the framework into everyday practice

• Supported real-world adoption — planned and facilitated project workshops to mentor diverse teams in applying the framework to real business and service challenges

• Co-created supportive tools and methods — including journey mapping flows, research enablers, define methods, and other practical tools to lower the barrier to design adoption

• Adopted across OTP Bank and in progressive rollout across 11-country in OTP group

• Enabled faster problem framing, clearer cross-unit collaboration, and risk-resilient development

• Strengthened internal capabilities — enabling teams to confidently apply the process without service design consultants, while knowing when to involve expert support.

• Catalysed further SD and UX initiatives across the group

• Winner of the iF Design Award 2024

Designing this framework was like designing for designers, managers, and sceptics at once. We had to balance ambition with feasibility, adapt to different levels of digital and design maturity, and build trust through real use-cases. This wasn’t just a methodology — it was a cultural bridge. It gave people a shared language, a toolkit for change, and confidence to act.