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Case Study
Note: To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of my current employer.
My Role
My Role
🤔 Concepting / ✏️ Sketching / 📝 Wireframing 🎨 UI/UX Design / 🤖 Prototyping
Tools
Tools
Sketch / Photoshop Illustrator / Invision
Platform
Platform
Mobile
Timeline
Timeline
24 hours
The Business Problem:
In a competitive landscape, product stagnation is a significant risk. The organization needed a vehicle to accelerate R&D, bypass traditional development bottlenecks, and identify high-impact features that could Simplify, Innovate, and Grow Business Value. The challenge was to move from abstract ideation to a technically feasible, high-fidelity concept within an extremely compressed timeframe while maintaining alignment with core business objectives.
The Strategic Solution
I acted as the Design Lead within a cross-functional squad of engineers, facilitating a "Design Sprint" methodology to rapidly narrow a wide funnel of ideas into a singular, high-value solution.
Rapid Synthesis & Ideation: Led collaborative brainstorming sessions to align disparate engineering capabilities with user-centric goals, prioritizing ideas based on the Innovation/Feasibility Matrix.
UX Strategy & System Design: I spearheaded the UI/UX architecture, focusing on a "Wow Factor" that didn't compromise system integrity. I translated complex backend engineering concepts into a simplified, intuitive interface that demonstrated immediate business value.
Cross-Functional Synergy: Managed the designer-to-developer handoff in real-time, ensuring that every interactive element was within the scope of the hackday's technical constraints while pushing the boundaries of the brand’s visual language.
The Result
Validated Innovation: The team successfully delivered a working prototype that secured a top-tier "Wow Factor" rating, demonstrating a clear path toward Impact and Growth.
Engineered Feasibility: By working in lockstep with engineering, we produced a concept that was 100% buildable, reducing the time-to-market for a potential feature integration.
Operational Excellence: The project served as a blueprint for high-velocity collaboration, proving that design-led innovation can significantly shorten the discovery phase of the product roadmap.
Strategic Growth: The final solution provided a tangible vision for simplifying user workflows, directly correlating to increased business value and future scalability.
Problem Synthesis
Discovery phase for "Share Wisely," a peer-to-peer (P2P) financial transfer feature integrated into the Wisely mobile ecosystem. My research focused on the interplay between Wisely Pay and Wisely Direct—enterprise-grade payroll solutions designed to eliminate physical distribution overhead and facilitate split-pay and off-cycle liquidity.
I identified that the primary constraint was the closed-loop nature of the product; the feature must function exclusively within the Wisely card ecosystem while maintaining the app's core utility of daily spend tracking.
Then when into mapping phase with the existing electronic pay capabilities to identify where a "Share" function could provide the most friction-less experience for users already utilizing instant-pay features.
Ideation & Feature Prioritization
To move from abstract concept to a viable product strategy, I led a high-velocity ideation cycle focused on user benefit and business alignment.
Collaborative brainstorming facilitated cross-functional workshops to generate a broad funnel of features, ensuring each concept leveraged the existing strengths of the Wisely infrastructure.
I utilized Affinity Mapping to categorize raw ideas into logical functional clusters. This allowed the team to identify overlapping value propositions and streamline the user journey.
Refined the feature set by applying a Impact vs. Feasibility framework, narrowing the scope to high-value interactions that maximized user utility while ensuring technical alignment with the current payroll-driven architecture.
Low-Fidelity Task Flows
Low-Fidelity Task Flows
I transitioned from conceptual ideation to low-fidelity structural sketching, mapping the core functional logic within the existing application ecosystem. In collaboration with the engineering team, we conducted a feature-prioritization audit to identify and highlight the high-value utilities that would drive the most immediate user impact.
Workflow user journey, UX simplification phase, stripping away non-essential steps to create a direct, task-oriented path. This included architecting a streamlined onboarding experience designed to minimize time-to-value for new users.
Given the project's aggressive timeline, I made the calculated decision to bypass digital low-fidelity wireframing. Instead, I utilized my comprehensive structural sketches as a foundation to move directly into high-fidelity UI and visual design.
Leveraging the existing component library and design system, I was able to maintain brand consistency and architectural integrity while accelerating the design-to-production pipeline, ensuring a polished, functional delivery within the tight delivery window.
High-Fidelity Interface Design & Systems Thinking
Following the validation of the functional architecture, I developed a proprietary visual language for the application. This included a bespoke logo and a suite of semantic illustrations designed to reduce cognitive load during the onboarding sequence, guiding users through complex FinTech workflows with intuitive visual metaphors.
With the high-fidelity interface established, I focused on optimizing visual and UX signifiers to enhance navigational clarity. By engineering distinct active states, breadcrumbs, and hierarchy cues, I ensured the navigation was deterministic and reduced the user's "time-to-task" completion.
I streamlined User Flow Map that visualized the critical path from onboarding to transaction. To de-risk the development phase, I deployed an interactive high-fidelity prototype for internal usability auditing.
Facilitating these internal testing sessions, I was able to identify and resolve micro-interaction friction points and navigational "pain points" early. This ensured the final design was not only aesthetically cohesive but also functionally robust for developer handoff.
Retrospective:
Challenge: Ahe primary objective was to integrate a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) money transfer feature into the existing Wisely payroll ecosystem within an extremely compressed "Hackday" timeline.
The project faced some hurdles:
The solution needed to function seamlessly within a closed-loop system (Wisely Pay/Direct cards) while maintaining the app's core utility as a payroll and spending tracker. Time-to-Market Pressure: We needed to move from abstract ideation to a production-ready, high-fidelity prototype in hours, not weeks, requiring a strategic shortcutting of traditional UX phases without compromising the "Wow Factor" or technical feasibility.The Takeaway: This initiative demonstrated the power of Lean UX by bypassing traditional low-fidelity wireframing in favor of rapid structural sketching and Design System leverage. By acting as a Product Architect, I utilized semantic illustrations and a cohesive visual identity to significantly reduce cognitive load during complex financial onboarding while ensuring technical feasibility through tight engineering alignment.
The Result: By deploying a high-fidelity interactive prototype, I secured immediate stakeholder buy-in and eliminated interaction friction in real-time. This "Share Wisely" framework not only streamlined user activation but also established a scalable visual language and iconographic suite designed for long-term growth across the broader ecosystem.
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