WELLS FARGO: PAYMENTS ORG
Over the past year, Wells Fargo has undergone a complete mobile redesign, including the development of experiences like the Financial Relief Center to provide a more robust and fully self-service experience. This initiative involves a complex network of connection points, serving as a hub for multiple lines of business.
I am a design leader with a role of a Principal Product Designer aka Team Design Lead.
Financial relief center
“I really like the self service nature. Financial Hardship is often embarrassing and with this, I don’t have to talk to someone over the phone. Feels private when I can do it myself. It’s more consuming to get a call.”
Under my XD leadership, I influenced a large-scale initiative, advocating for its prioritization at the executive level. This effort focused on the need for a self-service experience to help customers secure financial relief during natural disasters and government shutdowns.
Business Challenge
Create an MVP and North Star solution that would be a self-service experience for Line of Businesses such as Home Lending, Auto, and Credit Card.
How I Led
As the Principal Product Designer/Payments XD Lead, I took the responsibilities of a strategic leader managing 3 XD Designers, 2 Content Strategists, Line of Business Partners, FRC Product Owner, User Researcher and other Payment partners to keep product alignment. I manage the day-to-day cadence, and facilitate all conversations across the entire company regarding FRC. I am the Creative Director to ensure the highest quality of experience and alignment with Mobile Governance and brand. I’m also a dedicated mentor and coach to XD designers.
Customer Empathy
Before anything, we must understand the customer’s POV and fully open our empathy lens. We always map our goals against a comprehensive User Persona and Journey Map allowing our teams to surface up opportunities to focus on improving.
PRODUCT
Partnering up and sponsored by the FRC Product Owner, we were able to establish key features to create an MVP that can actually be built based on all of the company’s red tape and LOB complexities. We also made sure our line of communication was fully open with Home Lending, Credit Cards Collection and Auto.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The flows definitely evolved through time and several iterations based on an earlier version over a year ago. Based on user research and customer feedback, we constantly adjusted our experience to more accurately create an experience that solves the majority of their problems. FRC is and should be a very unique experience compared to most payment rails. It leads with understanding a customer has gone through a very tough situation and their state of mind is already defeated going into this. We need to be sensitive with the voice and tone, the information we offer them and what offers we provide.
USER RESEARCH
One of the most important part of creating products is getting in the hands of real customers. From our much earlier versions of the Financial Relief Center to the most recent, we’ve gone through 5 User Tests. Each test got higher scores than the previous ones.
DESIGN RESOURCING
As part of my role, I have to make sure we are staffed with the right amount of resources. Within this project, I had to fight for more time with my team. Together we are strong with all of the knowledge and expertise we’ve gained as the machine we’ve become. Within the attrition impacts, it’s made it a bit more challenging to work with our Design and Program Leaders.
TRANSFER & PAY HUB
As the lead designer in this highly significant complex political problem, I worked collaboratively with an Architect design leader. He and I worked together closely with the Product leaders in shaping this highly political Hub. Working at 50% capacity, this ended up being a 3 month process for a 1 page design. It was presented and cycled through many facets of the XD organization, user tested, and presented to Head of Digital.
