My role
Lead Product Designer
Industry
Finance
Problem
Since 2019, Jeeves has been on a mission to empower businesses globally with a modern approach to financial services. However, in early 2023, the company had to pivot its business model and product offering.
Their web application, built with significant technical debt, lacked consistency in architecture and user experience, and ignored accessibility. So when the design team (which was made of 3 people by then) was presented with the challenge of redesigning the platform in such a crucial moment, it was clear to me that this wouldn't be a simple UI revamp — we'd have to change the foundations of our culture.
Outcome
Over the course of three months, we restructured our principles, processes, and ways of working with our product team counterparts, and this is the brief story of how we achieved that.
Background
Exposing the
challenges
Consistency
When I joined the company in 2023, the first thing I did was a platform audit. While I was in the early stages of understanding the product and the challenges we were solving for customers, it was clear that the platform and experience were broken.
The user interface had at least five different types of primary buttons, inconsistent spacing and alignment, confusing navigation, and no accessibility concern whatsoever.
Scalability
Another major issue was the not having a design system and an equivalent on the code side. Every change had to be manually implemented across the codebase, making it difficult to work on improvements or introduce new products with the redesign.
Collaboration
When it first started, the company only had engineers and product managers but no designers. As a result, by the time designers joined the team, design was seen as a service rather than an integral part of the team.
When it came to early stages of a project or feature, getting design involved in exploration or definition wasn’t common. Because of that, design was brought in too late in the development, which led to a long backlog of unresolved UX debt.
I remember having one pressing question in my mind at all times:
How can we work on a redesign if we don't tackle the structural problems we’ve got first?
With a team of just three designers, we had to juggle existing work and a complete platform redesign under tight deadlines.
Establishing our
principles
Before starting any design work, I proposed principles to guide us, which became the design team’s Northstar:
• Research: Build the system based on user input, not assumptions
• Usability: Ensure the system is easy to use and navigate for all users
• Consistency: Maintain a consistent look and feel across all platforms to establish a recognizable brand identity
• Accessibility: Follow established accessibility guidelines and standards
• Scalability: Ensure the system can accommodate new features and future technical changes
• Flexibility: Allow for customization and variation while maintaining consistency and adherence to design principles
With our principles in place, our first major challenge was to rebuild our design system from scratch. This included everything from colors and fonts to complex components and page templates. Within a month, we had the first version of our design system, which we kept iterating and improving in the upcoming months. I also collaborated with two front-end engineers to build a library using Storybook, which made development also move faster.
Designing our new product offering
Simultaneously, we worked on new features and products. I focused on the new onboarding experience and the redesigned dashboard, which provided important information about customer accounts and transactions.
The new UI was a complete transformation. With simplified navigation, vibrant touches of color and elegant components, it marked a bold departure from the past. In just 90 days, we not only redesigned our application but also redefined our identity as a company.
Here's a before and after:
Relearning how to collaborate
Changing how people work and perceive design was the biggest challenge. I held sessions with product managers and engineers to highlight why our current methods were not ideal and how they would impact our upcoming work.
These open sessions led to a new collaboration format, including design being an active part of the definition phases and incorporating design reviews during development.
The launch
Those three months were intense. We built a simple design system, changed our ways of working, and delivered new features. Jeeves 2.0 launched in July 2022, introducing prepaid products and enhanced expense management on top of a global financial infrastructure.
Our hard work paid off with significant metrics improvements. Since the launch of Jeeves 2.0, our NPS increased from 5 to 8. While there’s still a long way to go, a 3-point increase in less than a year is something we are very proud of.
3 points
Increase in our NPS score after the launch of Jeeves 2.0
1
Learning from the pressure
This was an intense project. Working under pressure was challenging, but I learned a lot. With only three designers, including our manager, we had a lot of autonomy and responsibilities, and we were held accountable for them;
2
Finding peace with context switching
Frequent context switching can be hard. Working on so many fronts at the same time was very difficult, but also increased incredibly the authority I had on our product, infrastructure and business goals;
3
Avoiding frustration
While we had the product and engineering team get onboard with the changes I was suggesting for our ways of working, effectively changing them isn’t a breeze. Understanding that changing deeply rooted practices takes time was crucial to avoid frustration.
"Carla excelled at bringing structure to our design processes during the creation of Jeeves 2.0. She has a talent for establishing clear, effective frameworks that guide our projects from concept to completion. Her structured approach ensures that all team members are aligned, deadlines are met, and project goals are achieved."
