Enter Password

From Complexity to Clarity..

This global payments platform was growing fast — across fintech segments, regions, and customer types. But its internal tools, customer-facing portals, and partner products had all been built in isolation. The result? Fragmented journeys, duplicated flows, and rising operational costs.

Customers struggled to self-serve. Internal teams juggled multiple inconsistent systems. Compliance and access controls varied between tools. And partner products, though essential to the offering, lacked cohesion — creating support overhead and brand confusion.

To support scale, global compliance, and long-term growth, the business needed more than just UI fixes. It needed a unified, modular foundation to consolidate tools, enable custom workflows, and flex to complex needs without adding friction.

Scalable, Consolidated, Customisable

Scalable through a modular design approach
We introduced an object-based UX framework with templated interaction patterns (view, edit, create). This enabled faster delivery across squads, while supporting shared navigation and consistent behaviours platform-wide.

Consolidated into a single platform experience
All tools were brought under one platform structure—unifying internal operations and customer-facing portals. Shared navigation, information architecture, and a central design system replaced duplicated screens and siloed logic. It also created a predictable structure that could support complex filtering and search at object level.

Customisable to support complex workflows
We defined role-based access models—including maker-checker flows—with product and compliance. Feature flagging and flexible templates enabled teams to tailor experiences to customer needs while staying within a shared system.

Approach

Problem
The platform experience spanned eight separate tools—internal and partner-built—with no shared navigation, duplicated workflows, and inconsistent permission models. There was no single view of the full user journey, making it difficult to prioritise improvements or scale the product cohesively across teams, segments, or geographies.

Approach
I led a full service journey mapping exercise in collaboration with product, ops, and implementation teams. We documented key workflows—from onboarding to daily servicing—highlighting where experiences overlapped, broke down, or depended on manual effort. This work aligned teams around a shared understanding of the current state and revealed structural gaps.

Outcome
The journey map became a foundation for platform unification. It directly informed the object model, navigation strategy, and permissions framework—enabling scalable templates, clean partner integration, and a cohesive experience across user types and geographies.

Defining the Object Model

Problem
The platform lacked a consistent structure. Navigation, screens, and logic varied across tools, making it hard to scale experiences, reuse design, or support role-based search and filtering.

Approach
I introduced an object-oriented UX framework to define the core building blocks of the platform—such as Customers, Accounts, and Products. Each object informed a top-level navigation section, templated layouts for view/edit flows, and structured metadata that powered scalable filtering and search logic.

Outcome
The object model enabled a single, modular framework that scaled across user roles, segments, and partner products. It streamlined navigation, reduced design effort, and formed the backbone for advanced filtering and data-driven workflows. Crucially, it helped rally cross-functional teams around a shared structure and product vision—accelerating alignment and delivery.

Designing for Consistency and Speed at Scale

Problem
The platform lacked visual and interaction consistency. Components were duplicated across tools, styling was inconsistent, and accessibility standards weren’t embedded— A risk given that we worked with regulated enterprises. The existing system was slowing delivery and increasing rework across squads.

Approach
To accelerate delivery and improve quality, we customised an off-the-shelf system to align with our object-based framework. I partnered with another designer to tokenise core styles, define usage rules, and create modular templates for key actions like view, edit, and create. We embedded accessibility requirements, documented behaviour, and worked closely with engineering to ensure smooth implementation and reuse across internal and partner-facing products.

Outcome
The design system reduced design and dev time by up to 70%, improved cross-squad consistency, and provided a scalable foundation for new features and partner integrations. Templates ensured repeatable UX patterns, tokens allowed for flexible theming, and the system became a critical enabler of faster, more consistent delivery across the platform.

Creating a Cohesive Platform Experience

Problem
The platform combined internally built tools with third-party partner products—each with different interfaces, branding, and flows. This fragmented the user experience, created servicing overhead, and led to confusion around access, ownership, and interaction boundaries.

Approach
I defined a two-mode integration strategy to consolidate and standardise partner delivery. Lighter integrations used a marketplace-style link-out model, while deeply embedded partners followed a structured configuration-based approach. I worked with engineering to formalise this into an “integration mode” framework, supported by UI guardrails, templated navigation patterns, and a shared configuration file structure. I also collaborated with product and GTM leads to define when and how each model should be used—and led rebranding efforts across partner tools to maintain UX and visual consistency.

Outcome
We reduced onboarding time and integration complexity for new partners, established a repeatable model for future scaling, and delivered a significantly more unified experience across internal and external tools. The model improved clarity for users, lowered support demand, and gave commercial teams the flexibility to onboard new offerings without compromising platform cohesion.

Enabling Customisation Without Complexity

Problem
Clients had diverse operational requirements, including varying approval processes, notifications, and user permissions. Previously, these were handled as exceptions or manual workarounds—resulting in delivery delays, inconsistent experiences, and compliance risks.

Approach
We introduced a configurable workflow model to support common variations—like maker-checker logic, approval routing, and notification settings—directly in the product. I worked closely with product and compliance to define what could be safely exposed to clients, and partnered with engineering to structure these into a dedicated Organisational Settings layer. These options were aligned to our object model and templated into the design system for reuse.

Outcome
This enabled clients to manage complex workflows without custom development, while keeping the experience safe, consistent, and compliant. Partnering with compliance early meant governance was built into the UI—reducing risk, supporting scale, and giving clients meaningful control without compromising platform integrity.

Delivering a Cohesive, Scalable Platform

Solution Summary
We re-architected the platform around a shared, modular UX foundation. Navigation was rebuilt using an object-oriented model, enabling consistent list, detail, and action views. A customised design system introduced reusable templates and tokenised styles to accelerate delivery across squads and partner contexts. Partner products were integrated through a standardised, two-track model, ensuring visual and functional cohesion. Key workflows were made configurable, enabling clients to manage complex approval chains and compliance logic without requiring custom builds.

Together, these elements formed a single, scalable system that could flex across global segments, support internal teams and external partners, and serve as the foundation for future product growth.

Outcomes & Reflections

Strategic Outcomes

  • Increased sales by 6% QoQ following improved onboarding and platform cohesion

  • Reduced design and development time by 50–70% through reusable templates and standardised patterns

  • Significantly lowered support burden by unifying internal and partner-facing experiences

  • Decreased integration complexity and time-to-value for new partner products

  • Created a shared UX model adopted across product, tech, and compliance teams

  • Enabled future scalability through modular design, flexible navigation, and structured metadata


Reflections
This project demonstrated the impact of designing infrastructure, not just interfaces. By mapping journeys, defining objects, and systematising UX patterns, we created a platform that was more than consistent — it was scalable, flexible, and aligned across teams. Embedding compliance, modularity, and partner integration into the core design approach didn’t just make the product better — it made the business faster, more confident, and ready to grow. For me, it reinforced the value of designing from the system up — and the power of a shared foundation to accelerate everything that comes next.