I was engaged by the Westpac GEL team to support the Re-Imagined Banking project known as Simple. It was entering the second phase and the GEL team wanted a systems design focus on the governance of CX. The team needed to ensure the established GEL principles were being adhered to and that strategic goals of production efficiency; multi-brand; and accessibility were delivered.
The project scope required me to work closely with the CX team of 2 CX designers and 1 content strategist, however this grew to 2 dedicated customer experience designers, 1 design lead and a program lead with 1 specialist user experience resource focusing on responsive.
I was directly responsible for the implementation of the Westpac GEL within the project and tasked with making sure that CX concepts and intents were able to be maintained throughout the project. This required me being across all aspects of the CX during the initial phase of framework establishment, which was to be applied holistically across the Bank of Melbourne internet site with both desktop and a mobile responsive approach. Bank of Melbourne had been chosen as the pilot case as being part of the larger St George group. This required significant stakeholder engagement as the brief required me to have an impact on several departments from CX and Visual Design to Production and Technology. Often with stakeholders having specific and sometimes divergent objectives.
The focus for my role in CX was facilitating stakeholder focus on the detailed design and maintaining engagement, whilst sustaining CX intent. This was achieved by:
- Facilitate CX commitment to known scalable elements early – so production and + visual design can begin building early
- Represent CX in all agile rituals – allowing them to focus on tight delivery deadlines for journeys + detailed design, whilst sustaining CX intent through production
- Traceability of CX deliverables – capturing CX intent / artifacts in line with project op rhythm. This required the use Confluence and Jira
- Managing CX deliverables + content – to ensure developer backlog is full
- Ensuring CX thinking is captured and discoverable for stakeholders and future projects to build on.
For visual design it was supporting quality, efficiency and ability to adapt to change + find the right solutions. At time this meant being a champion within Senior stakeholder meetings to “getting on the tools” to ensure the highest quality design was being implemented and Devs understood what was to be built.
- Supporting visual design quality + efficiency meant ensuring when visual design starts, they had all the content and technology needs required for quality and speed
- Safeguard quality through peer review – internally and through Design Quality Support Sessions and design clinics
- Engaging with Brand Champions directly – as an extension of GEL team, to find solutions that could be refined by visual design in line with the larger brand objective and following a multi brand solution
- Supporting visual design needs – in cross-functional meetings with other stakeholders + technology
Production was made up of scrum masters, produces and technology developers for UI and AEM integration so the focus was more on delivery
- Focus on AEM components – rather than “features” early in the process
- Support CX and Visual Design to value authoring within AEM as an important part of the process to bring the CX intents to life
- Consistent voice to challenge assumptions or change – particularly with product or project stakeholders • Representing technology challenges early – with all disciplines • Supporting technology to push what is possible – with quality CX intent in mind
- Facilitate a more mature understanding of the GUI front end framework with the developer community
- Facilitate higher quality implementation of design system – which leverages existing (AEM + GUI integration for Westpac) + adapts to the new ideas introduced by the Simple design • Maximise component reuse – on the spectrum of high to low reuse, no components that are purely bespoke.
- Managing third party code review resources – set up, get scope established, clear, and manage the engagement across disciplines affected
Along with all of the above the project was being led by BOM Brand and Marketing which meant the need for careful consideration to apply the design to the other two brands to maintain the essence of their individual brand personalities + the expectations of the different brand and marketing stakeholders. With a strong background in brand + visual design, I acted as an extension of the GEL team; freeing GEL resources up to focus on capabilities being developed for Group-wide use, eg Sketch tools for designers + responsive, multibrand design tools
