TIAA Fintech Product Design
TIAA FinTech Product Design — Over 20 projects delivering thoughtful solutions for money movement and enterprise product needs, serving customers, internal teams, and users across multiple brands and devices.
Enterprise UX Transformation
1. From Reactive Support to User-Driven Product Design
The presentation, led by Chris Anthony, outlines a shift from reactive, service-oriented UX support to a proactive, user-driven product design approach. The goal is to move beyond patchwork solutions and legacy debt, positioning UX as a strategic leader in enterprise product development.
2. Current State: Tech Debt and Organizational Silos
The enterprise faces significant technology debt, fragmented design practices, and siloed teams. Product Owners (POs) and Tech teams often lack a unified vision, resulting in sub-feature-driven projects and inconsistent user experiences. The presentation emphasizes the need for UX to lead the vision and drive consolidation across legacy systems.
3. Paradigm Shift: Modular, Headless Systems
A major transformation is underway: moving to modular, headless design systems (e.g., Ethos, UD#). This shift aims to create scalable, adaptable frameworks that support web, mobile, and institutional products. UX is positioned as the champion of this change, advocating for enterprise guidelines and consistent design language.
4. Process Evolution: The 5Ds and Agile Alignment
The presentation critiques the current UX process, which is misaligned with PO and Dev teams. It calls for a unified, agile approach based on the "5Ds" (Discovery, Definition, Design, Develop, Deploy), with UX taking a seat at the table from the earliest phases. The need for reproducible processes, enterprise design systems, and strong leadership is highlighted.
5. Enterprise Design: Breaking Down Silos
There’s a push to realign product functionality and design teams within new frameworks (UD3, UDP). The presentation maps out current silos and proposes a more integrated org structure, emphasizing cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing. The goal is to develop predictable and scalable UX solutions across the entire enterprise.
6. Challenges and Next Steps
Key challenges include managing legacy UX service work, ensuring consistent visual language, and organizing PO and Tech teams for enterprise support. The presentation suggests forming a "Jedi council" of lead UX designers to standardize solutions, educate teams, and oversee project tracking. It stresses the importance of leadership, process alignment, and a strong taxonomy for enterprise tools and widgets.
Strategic Insights
Lead Vision and Change: Principle UX designers must drive the transition from legacy debt to future-ready frameworks, advocating for enterprise-wide standards and modular design systems.
Champion Process Alignment: Align UX, PO, and Tech teams around agile, user-centered processes. Ensure UX is involved from discovery through deployment.
Break Down Silos: Foster cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing to create unified, scalable solutions.
Establish Governance: Form leadership groups to standardize design patterns, manage legacy transitions, and maintain consistency across products and platforms.
Focus on Scalability and Consistency: Develop and enforce a strong taxonomy and classification system for enterprise tools, ensuring consistent user experiences regardless of channel or product.
If you’d like a more detailed breakdown of specific sections or recommendations for actionable next steps, contact me.