Fidelity
2025 - Now
MVP 1 Built
Many tools, one standard teams want to use
Five teams, eight tools, and one question: how do you get designers and teams to choose a shared standard when nobody has to?
Overview
Each new effort started from zero, so I built the memory our design team was missing.
Fidelity has a chapter of about 30-40 designers serving the institutional side of the business. Each product area owns a tool inside a larger platform. Mine owns operations and reporting, the admin tools that firms and internal teams use to set people up to do their jobs.
Here’s what I found. Our design system was built for components, not for scaling patterns across platforms, and nobody had written down how the pieces fit together. So careful, talented designers made slightly different choices, new designers joined blind, and users met one platform that behaved like many.
I’m a Senior UX Designer and a strategic partner to the product area. I don’t own the roadmap, so I couldn’t announce a fix. I built what was missing, proved it inside real work, and made it easy enough that people chose it. Three efforts prove it under real roadmap pressure, and each has its own page above.
Three questions guide this work
03
Can someone Keep it going without me?
A weekly stand up shares what we learn. A RACI pilot is testing how contribution spreads across people, not just me.
What has changed so far
Stakes
One unclear word can end up as a customer phone call.
Dana runs onboarding for a service team. Monday, a new hire starts. In one tool, she clicks Assign. In the next, the same action is called Add. In the third, it hides behind a menu called More.
She picks Add. It creates a second profile instead of granting access. By 9:15, the new hire is locked out, and Dana is filing a ticket. A client waiting on that new hire gets transferred twice.
Now picture the other side of that screen. Priya joins the product area as a designer the same Monday. There's no handbook, no list of what's already been decided, and no pattern to pick up. So Priya does what any good designer would do. She builds the best version she can. It's careful, it's reasonable, and it's one more dialect.
Both scenes are composites, no real people.
01
Friction
Three names for one action
Assign, Add and a buried menu all meant the same thing, so admins had to remember each tool’s version.
02
Friction
Mistakes stayed quiet
A wrong click looked like success. The problem only showed up later, when someone couldn’t sign in.
03
Friction
Fixes stayed local
Each team patched its own tool, so the next tool still had its own wording.
Multiply that Monday by every admin and every week, and it becomes a number. About 750K to 875K avoided contacts a year, at about $8 each, comes to $6 to 7M a year in call center cost.
750k to 875k
Avoided contacts a year
My planning target, not a measured results.
Target
About $8
Cost per contact
Industry benchmark for one phone contact
Benchmark
$6 to 7M
Call center cost a year
the size of the bet.
Target
The $8 is context, not my result. The 750K to 875K is my planning target, and nobody has measured it yet.
The designers paid a different price. They rebuilt things that already existed, because no one could point them to the answer. Same root cause: a design practice that couldn't remember.
Evidence
I counted before I proposed anything.
Before I suggested a single pattern, I audited how the eight tools handled the same four jobs: assigning access, checking status, reporting, and telling a user what just happened. I went job by job and tool by tool, so I was comparing like with like instead of arguing from taste. Then I asked the product teams what they were afraid a shared pattern would cost them.
8 Tools
Audited one job at a time
4 Jobs
Assigning access, checking status, reporting, and telling a user what happened
5 ways
found to assign different types of access.
What the teams were afraid of
I didn't run a survey. I had conversations, and the same worries kept coming back. These are paraphrased themes, not quotes.
01
Observed
It will slow my roadmap.
A shared pattern sounded like extra work on a deadline that was already tight
02
Observed
It will flatten my tool.
Each team felt its product has a job to do that a standard might not respect
03
Observed
Nobody will keep it going.
Teams had seen standards launch and fade, and didn't want to depend on one.
None of those worries were wrong. So I stopped trying to win the argument and started designing around them.
What the audit showed
I put every finding on a board and grouped it. Four patterns came out, and each one traces back to a moment from the Monday scenes.
Illustrative notes. Grouped from the audit
Key insights
The same action had five names, so admins had to remember each tool's version.
A wrong click looked like success until someone couldn't sign in.
Status words changed from tool to tool, so users couldn't tell what had happened.
Teams solved the same problem twice because nobody could find the last answer.
How solid is this?
The audit
8 tools, 4 jobs, 5 ways to assign access. I did this work myself
The worries
Paraphrased themes from conversations with product teams. Not a survey.
The savings
The $6 to 7M is a planning target. Nothing is measure until the patterns ship.
Decision
Exploring interface directions
I explored multiple layout directions focused on balance visibility, transaction context, and workflow clarity. Each concept tested different approaches to grouping financial information, simplifying navigation, and helping users scan important details faster.
Exploring different dashboard concepts focused on hierarchy, transaction visibility, and clearer everyday financial workflows.
01
Focused overview
Explored a simplified top-level summary with clearer balance visibility and primary actions.
02
Modular layouts
Tested flexible dashboard blocks to improve grouping, spacing, and information hierarchy.
03
Task-oriented flows
Structured the interface around key financial actions and recurring user workflows.
Testing interaction flows early
Before moving into high-fidelity designs, I tested early interaction flows using low-fidelity paper prototypes. These quick sessions helped validate navigation patterns, layout hierarchy, and task completion behavior before investing time into polished UI design.
Solution
Refining the dashboard experience
The final redesign focused on improving clarity across everyday financial tasks through stronger hierarchy, simplified navigation, and more contextual transaction feedback. The updated interface made balances easier to compare, actions easier to locate, and activity flows easier to understand at a glance.
Overview of spending trends, category insights, and budget usage designed for faster financial scanning.
Instant card controls allowing users to freeze cards, manage limits, and update payment settings with minimal friction.
A simplified dashboard focused on balance visibility, transaction context, and clearer everyday financial workflows.
Before & after
The redesign focused on improving clarity across everyday financial workflows by simplifying navigation, strengthening visual hierarchy, and surfacing more contextual transaction information throughout the experience.
01
Clearer balance hierarchy
Balances became easier to distinguish through improved grouping, spacing, and visual separation.
02
More contextual activity flows
Transaction details, merchant information, and payment states were surfaced earlier to reduce uncertainty before actions.
03
Simplified navigation patterns
Important actions became easier to locate through clearer layout structure and more predictable workflow organization.
System
Designing for clarity, confidence, and everyday financial workflows
This project reinforced how strongly financial confidence is shaped by interface clarity rather than financial complexity itself. Throughout the redesign, I explored how hierarchy, spacing, and contextual feedback could reduce uncertainty during everyday financial tasks. One of the biggest learnings was recognizing how small interface decisions — such as grouping, transaction context, and action placement — significantly influenced how users interpreted information and navigated the product.
Key outcomes
Clearer hierarchy
Improved separation between balances, transactions, and supporting details.
Faster dashboard scanning
Reduced visual competition across key financial workflows and actions.
More contextual activity
Introduced transaction states, merchant context, and clearer activity flows.
Scalable design system
Created reusable dashboard patterns and modular workflow structures.
Results
Designing for clarity, confidence, and everyday financial workflows
This project reinforced how strongly financial confidence is shaped by interface clarity rather than financial complexity itself. Throughout the redesign, I explored how hierarchy, spacing, and contextual feedback could reduce uncertainty during everyday financial tasks. One of the biggest learnings was recognizing how small interface decisions — such as grouping, transaction context, and action placement — significantly influenced how users interpreted information and navigated the product.
Key outcomes
Clearer hierarchy
Improved separation between balances, transactions, and supporting details.
Faster dashboard scanning
Reduced visual competition across key financial workflows and actions.
More contextual activity
Introduced transaction states, merchant context, and clearer activity flows.
Scalable design system
Created reusable dashboard patterns and modular workflow structures.
Reflection
Designing for clarity, confidence, and everyday financial workflows
This project reinforced how strongly financial confidence is shaped by interface clarity rather than financial complexity itself. Throughout the redesign, I explored how hierarchy, spacing, and contextual feedback could reduce uncertainty during everyday financial tasks. One of the biggest learnings was recognizing how small interface decisions — such as grouping, transaction context, and action placement — significantly influenced how users interpreted information and navigated the product.
Key outcomes
Clearer hierarchy
Improved separation between balances, transactions, and supporting details.
Faster dashboard scanning
Reduced visual competition across key financial workflows and actions.
More contextual activity
Introduced transaction states, merchant context, and clearer activity flows.
Scalable design system
Created reusable dashboard patterns and modular workflow structures.
