How to balance business needs and user experience
When initially joining the project, there hadn't been a consistent designer on the onboarding project. They had delivered a MVP product but had to prioritize both UX enhancements to improve the experience as well as pushing out the rollout of additional custodians and account types that they could allow users to open with the platform. As a result, it became essential to navigate solutions and balance timelines to be able to prioritize both business needs of expanding the platform and creating efficiency for advisors while still finding ways to build in user feedback and reduce drop-off rates.
Check in often with all stakeholders
Working collaboratively across all stakeholders was one of the most crucial things I learned during my time on the project. Since the digital onboarding project was so extensive, several product managers and dozens of engineers worked on various aspects of the platform. Thus, communication across all stakeholders became essential to ensure that correct requirements were established between product, operations, engineering, and design. Thus, throughout sprints, it became essential that we checked in to ensure that features were implemented correctly and that we were consistently reaching business goals while still ensuring the best user experience.
Technical restraints requires creative solutions
One of the biggest struggles we ran into was that there was several technical restraints that we had to account for. Due to lower budgets as well as outdated storage databases, we often needed to come up with designs that would still meet all requirements while still delivering a good experience. We also had to learn more in-depth technical restraints ourselves to account for ways and timelines in which UX designs could be incrementally implemented to eventually reach our target design states.
Some words from people I worked with! :)
Elena is a reliable, personable, and well-rounded experience designer. The digital onboarding product has many complex nuances and dependencies. Elena was always able to approach these complicated constraints with creative solutions. She could synthesize details and articulate them clearly to key stakeholders, helping everyone understand the parameters. She contributed to all aspects of the design process including UX strategy, concepting, research, low fidelity wireframes, prototyping, visual design, and design systems.
When I first met Elena, she was a thoughtful observer in meetings. As she gained more confidence, she became an active speaker comfortable expressing her ideas, interfacing with leadership, and even pushing back when necessary to advocate for the best UX. It was amazing to watch her growth over the course of working together. Elena’s communication, patience, and talent made her an invaluable team member. She will be an incredible asset to any team or project she works on next!
Elena was a critical member of the product team while she supported multiple major deliveries. Design / UX might be the most challenging role on our engagement but Elena approached her delivery with care, thought and attention to detail all while maintaining a positive and collaborative attitude. She also took the initiative to collaborate with our product and operations stakeholders to develop a target state flow for our future deliverable – This will be key as we move toward the development phase! It will be tough to replace Elena.
