I was one of 3 user experience designers on this project. My team also consisted of a design director, a project manager, and 8 developers.

The Challenge
USAA was in need of a modernization effort designed to help members gain greater insight into their money across savings, checking, and credit card account summary pages on web and native mobile apps.

The existing legacy applications had not been updated in over a decade and were in need of a redesign as well as an update of the backend environment. There were huge inconsistencies in design and experience throughout the site and across all platforms. The goal of this project was to create a modern and more intuitive application that was consistent in experience across all platforms.

We started out by creating a comprehensive repository of direct and indirect competitors. We also documented positive and negative feedback that users had listed in public reviews of these applications. 

We conducted generative research sessions with our membership that consisted of in-person interviews. After synthesizing the feedback, we were able to have a better understanding of what our members use their bank accounts as well as identify areas that needed improvement.

After defining all the features and functionality needed, we moved on to creating the information architecture. We started out by recording the IA of the existing website and mobile apps. We then came up with a set of objectives to test with users. By using Optimal Workshop's Treejack software we were able to test these various scenarios with our members using text trees. Based on the results of these tests we eliminated, combined, or added elements until the ideal balance was found. Using Optimal Workshop allowed us to quickly iterate on several different iterations of the Account Summary space's IA, which produced metrics which allowed us to backup the team's new information architecture direction to stakeholders. 

After white boarding sessions and dozens of analog sketches we produced medium-fidelity wireframes of our concepts. These wireframes were then presented to our stakeholders and development partners to evaluate for viability in terms of scope, technical feasibility, severity of member need, and potential impact to the business.

After several rounds of iteration and user-testing, we produced higher fidelity designs that were handed over to our developers.