Digital Transformation
Case studies:
Project
A digital transformation of Merchant Services Onboarding experience was a complex, multi-stage onboarding application used by internal associates to onboard merchants that includes the ability to gather and document required information, screen, verify, configure and complete onboarding for merchants to take advantage of services for small, medium and enterprise businesses.
Internal associates struggled with navigation, tasks, inefficiencies, and required many hours of training due to the complexity and lack of an intuitive and effective user experience. The product used outdated language and bank speak which was not in line with the company’s brand, voice and content standards.
During Product and UX working sessions as well as user feedback, reporting and tracking of onboarding application tasks resulted in a high level of pain points and frustrations for our users (internal associates and merchants). The system was slow, static, and was a generic onboarding application built on a legacy platform that was being sunset that required many updates, bug fixes and had recurring system outages.
Challenges
- The current onboarding product was slow, static, and a generic onboarding application built in an outdated legacy platform.
- Increased requirements for legal, privacy, compliance risks
- Adhere to company brand, content, accessibility requirements
- New application must be built to be responsive on all devices
- Technology and development changes for connections to other services and databases.
- Exacerbated operational inefficiencies for our users resulting in lengthy onboarding of merchants
- Users had an unclear onboarding process and low merchant service satisfaction levels that led to increased churn rate
Processes, User Research, Testing, & Feedback
- Working sessions with business to define and understand business goals and objectives, identify key stake holders, and product requirements
- User research, surveys, and focus groups
- Design Thinking Workshops
- Brand, content and accessibility requirements testing and approvals
- A/B testing, user testing and feedback
- Full Usability Testing Session for Desktop
- User Acceptance Testing
Solutions
Based upon the business project scope, meetings with key stakeholders, goals and objectives for a digital transformation the UX & Product design team was tasked with a complete overhaul of the design and experience for onboarding merchants from the ground up. The product team was new and small to begin with four years ago and grew within the last two years to eight product team members including a Design Manager, Senior Design Leads, Product Designers, Content Strategy, Design System Architect and Design Operations. Below are some of the steps, processes and new out of the box features that enhanced the efficiency, speed and satisfaction for our users.
- Modernize Merchant Onboarding user experience and creation of an integrated new experience to improve operational efficiency, consistency, and intuitiveness for all user role-based work through a more linear flow to increase onboarding completion rates.
- Established an Information Architecture assessment that involved organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way. This led to a well-designed information system helping users to easily understand, locate, search information and complete tasks efficiently.
- Creation of a Merchant Onboarding Design System to streamline workflows, ensure consistency across a product, and foster collaboration among cross-functional teams that included Style, Components, Global and common pattern libraries, Templates and other resources.
- Building of a clean, responsive, and intuitive design that was flexible and allowed for multiple updates and changes without reinventing the wheel.
- Implemented interaction strategies to reduce user errors and data inputs per screen that created a 47% reduction in time to complete required inputs that reduced user frustrations and pain points.
- Provide integrated real time pre-populated data through intuitive progressive forms, and “Know the customer” (KYC) technology improvements.
- Addition of a prominent “Off-canvas Toolbar” drawer toprovide users the ability to access additional workflow tools and contextual help that increased functionality and help without adding to the cognitive load for our users.
- Worked closely with development to implement a drag and drop functionality for arranging of data, owners, as well as uploading of documents.
My Role
- Spearheaded the formation and leadership of a diverse team within the Merchant Services and Merchant Onboarding Solutions division, encompassing product designers, content specialists, and design system architects, to pioneer usercentered design solutions that markedly enhanced user satisfaction and engagement.
- Engineered and executed forward-thinking design strategies that were intricately aligned with organizational objectives, significantly elevating key performance metrics and driving product success.
- Oversaw the comprehensive design lifecycle, from initial user research and creative ideation through to prototyping and seamless implementation, guaranteeing the delivery of high-caliber projects within designated timelines.
- Forged and nurtured collaborations with cross-functional units, including product management, Agile scrum teams, and engineering departments, embedding design thinking deeply into the product development process to ensure innovative outcomes.
- Acted as a key contributor and thought leader in the conception of advanced design concepts, user experience frameworks, and cohesive components, while simultaneously directing the integration of branding, accessibility standards, and robust information architecture.
- Enhanced team performance and project outcomes by implementing best practices in design thinking and Agile methodologies, leading to the development of merchant onboarding solutions that surpassed industry standards and customer expectations.
User Flow Diagram
A Digital Transformation Process
