USAA

Role: UX Architect
Skills: Research, User Testing, Information Architecture, Prototyping, Stakeholder Presentations
The Challenge: Assume new design role in an enterprise project delivery environment, champion the user experience across the organization, deliver best in class software for usaa.com.
Results: My work improved the front-end experience of users acquiring information about our different product offerings, assisted them in choosing the best options for their unique situations, and successfully guided them through completing the online credit card application process.

This new role began with me successfully assimilating into a foreign land, an enterprise project delivery environment. I learned on the job how to create and deliver user experiences for usaa.com serving various lines of business within the company. I accomplished this by working with other design team members, project stakeholders, IT developers and usability experts to deliver new and enhanced functionality primarily for USAA’s flagship, usaa.com.

Various skills were required for this stretch of my five year journey at USAA. Of those skills, user research and testing were new ones for me. This role afforded me the opportunity to learn how to conduct user testing in collaboration with our Usability Department to test and refine user experiences throughout project lifecycles.

Designing for a large enterprise company also meant that I had to learn how to design experiences in a way that met legal, compliance, fraud, content, finance, and web standards.

My first three years at USAA were spent on the Credit Card project delivery team. The design team’s main charter was to improve and enhance anything and everything that had to do with the Credit Card experience on usaa.com. Through the experiences we designed and delivered at USAA, our work improved the front-end experience of users acquiring information about our different product offerings, assisted them in choosing the best options for their unique situations, and successfully guided them through completing the online credit card application process.

My Design Process:

DISCOVERY:

Research

• Internal companywide research: existing work and usability reports
• External research: review competitors, similar industry design work
• Usability review/analysis: for impact and level of effort needed (expert eval., full usability testing)
• Identify and conduct user/business research techniques
• Identify personas based on target audience

Data Gathering and Analysis

• Competitive analysis
• Requirements gathering: extracting design requirements related to business and user needs/goals
• Gather existing analytics: for specific domains being targeted with the project
• Collect and synthesize research data appropriately: storyboarding, journey maps, context scenarios, etc.

DEFINITION:

• Clearly define users and their needs/goals based on research phase
• Clearly define project scope and domain(s) based on design requirements
• Information Architecture documentation (As-is/To-be process maps)
• Ideation to develop initial concepts
• Wireframing and rapid prototyping to test early concepts with users
• Review early concepts with stakeholders to obtain buy-in regarding design direction

DETAILED DESIGN:

• Ideate >> Prototype >> Test – repeat as necessary, low fidelity
• Detailed wireframes, interactive prototypes – medium fidelity (advanced interactions, micro-interactions)
• Present detailed wireframes/interactive prototypes to stakeholders for review prior to usability testing
• Conduct usability testing Round 1 – detailed wireframes/interactive prototypes
• Review testing reports and make necessary changes
• Apply visual design layer to detailed wireframes/interactive prototypes
• Present high fidelity interactive prototypes to stakeholders for review prior to usability testing
• Conduct usability testing Round 2 – hi-fi interactive prototypes
• Review testing reports and make necessary changes
• Final stakeholder sign-off

DEVELOP/BUILD:

• Designer-Developer hand-off
• Assist development team as needed

Q/A TESTING:

• Review test cases
• Monitor defects and assist developers and Q/A testers as needed

DEPLOYMENT & WARRANTY:

• Production testing upon successful deployment
• Assist dev team with any production defects during the warranty phase