Design Leadership in Fintech

DESIGN LEADERSHIP, PRODUCT DESIGN, DESIGN OPS

Head of User Experience, IRESS Ltd

October 2013 - October 2018

Background

Iress is an ASX-listed global fintech that provides a wide range of software to international banks and financial institutions through to small single advisor offices. Solutions are provided for branch staff, financial advisors, telephony staff and direct to consumers

Team and culture

The team in place were great; talented and desperate to do a good job. The skills were in the team; they needed confidence, direction, and opportunities. We also had some gaps in skills, particularly around graphic design and user research.

I spent a lot of time on recruitment in the UK and overseas looking for people to fill research and visual design roles. I wanted individuals with complementary personalities who would grow and extend our culture, not simply fit into what we already had.

We agreed on a set of design principles that would drive team behaviour and decision-making.

I created competency skills and career progression frameworks for all roles and held regular 1-1 check-ins, offering feedback, support, and an open channel to talk about anything. I wanted to create a place people really loved working in and I think I succeeded. The team culture we created here was the basis for everything we achieved over the five years I was at Iress.

I spent a lot of time understanding stakeholders and their challenges. I was part of an Operational Leadership Team which gave me insights into how the business was performing and opportunities for improvement.

As a designer, I always strive to communicate better with the wider business. Being able to talk to senior execs, sales and client service teams raised credibility and gave us opportunities to get involved in wider service design projects.

Process and rituals

I coached a simple '4D' design process to give the team a consistent way of approaching different projects. We moved to a common set of design tools and a cloud-based asset library. We worked to WCAG standards to ensure our designs were accessible.

I requested the team move from their partitioned desks to a much more open and collaborative environment. We were allocated a great space with a bank of open desks near a huge glass wall. The team worked regularly at the wall, meeting informally to share and talk about their projects every day. The visibility of our work to others encouraged open participation and ad-hoc meetings often happened as people passed by.

I introduced weekly critiques where team members could ask for feedback and suggestions on specific areas of their work. The strength of culture promoted honest feedback and debate.

There was a huge cultural impact on the rest of the business. Other teams started requesting similar open spaces to work in. We came in one Monday to find most office walls had been painted with whiteboard paint.

Scaling

In September 2014, as part of a 6 month retrospective, I presented the following design summary to the Global Leadership Team:

we are working globally
we run a standard design process
we can execute that process against any project
we have demonstrated the business benefits of the process

But...if we focus 100% effort on just executing the process we will miss opportunities to:

increase IRESS’ attractiveness to customers, partners, advertisers
create a better, more connected user experience across key products
build a framework to ensure quality and consistency of services
deliver more positive brand experiences
do all the exciting stuff we want to do
deliver high quality products and services faster
increase user advocacy and good will

Project Cohesion was launched. A review of existing interfaces and subsequent creation of a global atomic pattern library for use across all Iress products. Cohesion was chosen as the range of solutions meant it was inappropiate to simplify the project to one of consistency. We recognised that sometimes things need to be different in order to make sense.

A team of three specialist front-end developers were moved into my team which meant we could design and develop a central library of assets and code components. These were distributed to global development teams for use across products. It was the first major step towards a design system.

Impact

The impact of design on the organisation was huge.

The software became more focused and better connected. Users moving from one Iress product to another had a cohesive experience. Advocacy grew and CSAT figures showed satisfaction rates dramatically rise. Iress hit its performance targets and the share price rose by more than 50% in the five years I was there. All this increased credibility and buy-in for the design function and it is now represented at C-suite level, with global design teams established in all major locations. Project Cohesion and the pattern library are steadily evolving into a dedicated design system using Figma, Zeplin and other tools.

The largest impact was to the organisational culture and ways of working. Iress has moved from a partitioned desk layout to offices that promote collaboration areas. The business actively encourages design thinking and holds offsite 'Think Tanks' getting groups of people and post-it notes in front of paper canvases to work through difficult problems. A user-centred culture is now central to the business.