Zero to One Enterprise Design Strategy for Fidelity Investments
Systems thinking, design principles, & design system for efficiency & quality
Screen capture of Helios Enterprise Design Strategy site, including the 7 design principles. Designed in Figma using the latest design system. Video edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Summary of Project & My Role
Once our new Head of UX Design had been onboarded and got to see the problems facing Design within the firm, he asked that we, as quickly as possible, create an enterprise-wide design strategy—something that many of us had asked and advocated for but didn’t have access to business executives who could make it a reality.
I was beyond excited to lead this project. Complex, nuanced, politically charged projects are where I thrive and my strengths shine because of my ability to understand, simplify, and organize chaos; get a group of highly opinionated people working together toward the same goal; and communicate with both the working team and stakeholders to make sure everyone feels heard and wants to adopt change because they were a part of it and they understand how it will benefit them.
Throughout this project, I worked independently and with small teams to:
Codify the strategy and design principles
Define OKRs and KPIs
Pilot measurement tools
Train thousands of employees
Evangelize and motivate adoption using multiple internal communication tools
Create feedback loops to collect ideas, questions, and suggestions
Revise in partnership with the Accessibility, Customer Inclusion, Women Investors, Young Investors, and Legal Privacy teams
Skills
Strategy, Visioning, Influence, Project Management, User Research, OKR & KPI Definition, UX & UI Design, Inclusive Design, Accessibility, Writing & Editing, Design Critique, Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), Instructional Design, Change Management
Tools
Mural, Qualtrics, Figma, Grammarly, Adobe Premiere Pro & Acrobat Pro, Degreed, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Powerpoint, & Sharepoint
Working Mural for team to define and elaborate on the 7 design principles. Icons from Figma library.
Problems We Aimed to Solve
Fragmented experiences
Decades of siloed business units led to fragmented site and app experiences, impacting the firm's brand and user satisfaction
Inefficiencies & tech debt
Lack of high-level cohesion caused inefficiencies and accrued tech debt, hindering the organization's agility and scalability
Lack of widespread UX understanding within product development teams
Despite executive buy-in, a lack of knowledge about the value of design among employees impeded efforts to improve product and experience quality
UX Quality Audit Scorecard I created in collaboration with User Research leaders. Used this Mural to facilitate a Visual Thinking Strategies session with stakeholders to gather actionable feedback for improvements. Designed in Figma.
Solution & Impact
Defined & evangelized an enterprise-wide strategy
Comprehensive yet flexible strategy to improve UX across products, business units, and customer segments—included 3 pillars, 1) design principles, 2) systems thinking & standards, and 3) success measurements
—which resulted in—
Design & business alignment
Positioned the design work of ~80 product teams as key to achieving both the enterprise multi-year plan and business-unit-specific annual KPIs
Boosted efficiency & quality
Implemented a central design system and collaboration rituals, reducing duplicate work, enhancing efficiency, and elevating design quality
Improved user experience
Achieved higher scores on adherence to design principles, resulting in improved consistency and quality of UX across products
Clip of me introducing one of the design principle training sessions. Deck created in Figma. Video edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.