Vanguard Digital Advisor
Design Ops | UX Strategy | Project Management
As the UX Strategist for the Financial Goals product team, tasked with explaining and visualizing complex algorithms that affect users’ investments, we faced a number of operational challenges. The product was inherently complex, and the lack of transparency in our processes made it difficult to collaborate effectively. Additionally, inaccurate estimations of scope and timelines created tensions between the product and UX teams. Despite these challenges, we recognized the importance of addressing these issues in order to improve outcomes for our users.
- Vanguard
- Financial Services
- UX Strategy & Design Ops
Assessing the Current Process
To get a full picture of the current design process, my learning plan focused on understanding the team dynamic and identifying quick wins with high impact.
Having individual meetings with each team member and stakeholder allowed me to identify common pain points and understand perceptions of our design process.
I conducted an event storm exercise to outline a linear current state of the process and align the team on where the top pain points and opportunities for improvement were located.
A retrospective of the previous quarter aligned the team on correlations between team morale and project milestones/hurdles.
A key pain point for the design team was lack of heads down time to work. Meeting audit allowed us to identify opportunities to improve collaboration points and time management.
The team’s biggest pain point was the absence of tracking in the design process. To address this, we implemented a simplified kanban board with assigned tasks. This allowed us to track the progress of each piece of work and gain insight into how long each task was taking.
The success of our tracking kanban enabled us to measure the time it takes for an initiative to complete the full design process. Using this data, we developed a framework for estimating new discovery work with S, M, L t-shirt sizes. This new estimation process has resulted in better project planning and a 100% success rate in meeting design delivery deadlines.
Organizational Impact
An outlined design process aligned to development sprints helped the team meet goals and deadlines, enabling proper design process and feature forecasting.
Documented role definitions and a team RACI provided clarity on each person’s responsibility in the design process, improving coordination and implementation time.
Defined agendas and increased meeting efficiency cut recurring meeting times by half, giving the design team more focus time.
Increased documentation of product journey, user personas, and methodologies reduced onboarding time by 50%.
Improved estimation for discovery and design initiatives resulted in 100% of projects meeting delivery deadlines.
In 1 year our team accomplished...
3
Major Feature Launches5
Discovery & Research Initiatives56
User Research Sessions