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Bad Back Office Is Bad Business

The legacy platform was feature-rich and business-critical, handling everything from client onboarding and configuration to reporting and servicing tasks. Customers relied on it daily.

But the experience had become increasingly unmanageable:

  • Essential information was buried or hard to find, buried under poor navigation & a lack of any information architecture. Users memorised quirks.

  • Risky actions were easy to trigger unintentionally, with minimal safeguards or visibility into outcomes

  • Dense, technical content made high-stakes decisions feel unnecessarily risky.


“I love the richness of information… But I struggle to use this thing” — Confused Customer



Missteps weren’t just likely , they were costly

Support tickets were filled with user questions like “what does this do?” or “can you help me reverse this?”. Mistakes could affect fund movements, compliance, or critical reporting - making even simple tasks feel tense and error-prone.


Internally, it was an operational bottleneck

Behind the scenes, the platform was just as painful to maintain:

  • Core business logic was hard-coded, so even minor changes could take weeks

  • Sales teams couldn't demo it

  • Customers and teams required extensive training to use it

  • Product and engineering were stuck in a loop of firefighting and workaround-building

This wasn’t just a UI problem, it was a systems problem. One that affected user trust, sales performance, and our ability to scale.

Built for Impact, Shipped with Urgency

Solving the right problem, not just polishing the surface

The system was huge, and a big bang revamp was going to be expensive and slow. Customers only used about 20% of the system. Research indicated customers didn't just need a better-looking UI, they needed faster access to critical tasks, clearer information and better guardrails to avoid costly mistakes.

So we opted to incrementally build out a new system, focused on customer facing features first with a new UX/UI. Meanwhile, we were providing design assets to sales teams to ease sales cycle challenges.

Features were launched in phases, with customers migrated in controlled cohorts to beta test. We worked closely with support and customer success to monitor adoption and gather feedback.

Low-risk internal tools were placed on a separate track. These would receive lighter UI upgrades later in the migration.



Designing for clarity, control, and confidence

We focused on the parts of the experience that directly shaped user trust and efficiency. This meant improving search and filtering, simplifying navigation, and introducing a clearer information architecture that aligned with how users actually thought about their tasks.

We rewrote complex, technical content to make it easier to scan and act on. Risky actions were redesigned as structured workflows, supported by stronger compliance features, clear confirmations, and visible audit trails. Every touchpoint was designed to reduce ambiguity, prevent costly errors, and help users feel in control of what the system would do next.

Approach

Rebrand, reskin or re-platform?

Problem
Complexity & cost of the project, as well as poor design maturity was hindering design resource allocation. Senior management wanted as little design resource as possible, strongly advocating for a simple reskin. This would risk project success.

Strategy and Approach
Use a survey to target large numbers of customers to uncover problems to be solved- Measure satisfaction and usability separately. Interview customers readily available.

Execution
Targeted 50 customers from a variety of segments using Qualtrics. Spoke with 4 decision makers. Asked open ended exploratory questions about problems, needs & opportunities.

Results
Uncovered customer satisfaction was high (5.5/10), a SUS score of 40- Clearly demonstrating the need for UX re-platforming. Now had a design specific metric. Customers alluded to UX issues- "Full of information, impossible to use"

What does this thing do?

Problem
Requirement building was severely hindered due to a lack of documentation, understanding and resource to assign product managers and B.As.

Strategy and Approach
Utilize Miro to collaboratively dissect the system piece by piece, build up a capability library- Focusing on objects, actions and assigning BA resource to uncover metadata.

Execution
We conducted focused sessions to break down the system into manageable parts, documenting insights and requirements in Miro, and encouraging team contributions for comprehensive coverage.

Results
Established a well-organised repository of system requirements, enhancing team alignment and understanding, which streamlined the development process and improved overall project clarity.

Prioritise most used features & majority of users

Problem
Lack of prioritisation approach was hindering design and development team decision making

Strategy and Approach
Utilise usage logs and behavioural research findings to develop a 2x2 prioritisation matrix, focusing on screens and other critical areas necessary to create a comprehensive user journey.

Execution
Analyse usage data and research outcomes to identify key user interactions, then map them into the prioritisation matrix to guide development efforts.

Results
Enabled the product team to develop a clear and customer centric roadmap, reducing friction and providing guidance.

Design Foundations

Mid project rebrand, design principles

Problem
Mid-project rebrand and a minimal existing design system. Analysis Paralysis impacting project timelines, lack of shared goals causing friction with teams & sheer project complexity - Namely the broad user base & customer segments, regulatory requirements.

Strategy & Approach
Establish an Atomic design system in the new brand, building as we progressed. Develop Design Principles to drive consistency, guide decision making, foster collaboration and enhance efficiency.

Execution
Design system audit, building out missing components as required. Using user research & collaborating with x-functional teams, we developed decision based design principles and embedded in Design Definition of Ready checklist.

Results
Design System of reusable styles, components, and variants to boost UX and design consistency, in collaboration with marketing. More efficient design work, better collaboration and a design north-star for the project, written in stone.

Front-loading behavioural user research

Problem:
Poor documentation and lack of customer led use cases were a risk to project success. A lack of understanding of who uses the system, why and what their context of use was meant that UX activities were hindered.

Strategy & Approach
Conduct field studies to uncover use cases, user journeys and uncover opportunities to improve UX overall.

Execution
To elucidate use cases and future user journeys, we scheduled 12 field studies with customers & divided the work equally. We surfaced these in user types, scenarios and to be user journeys and added to development tickets.

Results
Design sprint delays avoided as research was front-loaded, Structure and guidance to feature level design work. True user centricity in the resultant system led to few usability snags in testing.

Information Architecture

Problem
Learnability & findibility in the existing system were key customer challenges elucidated from the SUS scoring. Payments lacks standardised terminology, and the existing system had no concept of content grouping or categorisation.

Strategy & Approach
Using the system mapping, identify key objects in the system. Identify content heavy sections & use card sorting to create content categories.

Execution
Perform card sorting with customer facing stakeholders on content heavy key sections. Synthesise results to share with dev teams and manifest in design work.

Results
Design could proceed efficiently knowing content structure already, thereby ensuring we could focus on creative problem solving during sprints.

Design Sprints

We worked in two-week sprints, two sprints ahead of development. For each sprint, we focused on a key feature and our desired outcome-By articulating different user journeys associated with each feature we were able to ensure differing user needs were met. Per sprint, we developed concepts to address user pain points or identified key UX challenges. We ran x-functional design crits to elucidate feedback and ensure that our solutions were meeting business objectives.


Banking Back Office

The system enables users to find Customers, multiple types of Cards and Digital Wallets (e.g Gpay) and view Transactions that happened on these objects. Users can manage customer details, perform actions on cards and digital wallets such as blocking them and adjusting balances. Users can see audit trails of activities performed on an account. Finally, users can see granular configurations and rules set on cards and digital wallets.

"I love using this now! I'm able to do my job so much faster, and being able to compare screens is a game changer!"
Happy User

"Maeve's tenacity, drive and relentless push got this over the line. We couldn't have done it without her."
Nida Khan, Product Manger

Outcomes & Reflections

I successfully contributed to a major company milestone by designing their first web app, leading to over £250k in ARR and a significant boost in customer satisfaction.

My work eliminated design-related references in lost opportunity analysis, dropping from 40% to 0%.

Additionally, I elevated the design team’s role within the organisation, securing more resources and improving design quality by implementing new processes and team structures.

"I love using this now! I'm able to do my job so much faster, and being able to compare screens is a game changer!"
Happy User

"Maeve's tenacity, drive and relentless push got this over the line. We couldn't have done it without her."
Nida Khan, Product Manger