Case Summary
TransUnion’s move to a shared cloud platform created a challenge: make credit information useful for South African consumers while building an experience other regions could adapt.
I led a US-based designer and Canadian researcher, partnering with the South African product owner to connect local customer needs with the global platform strategy.
I used research to narrow five potential audiences to three priorities, shaping clearer score explanations, recommendations and reusable experience modules.
By the end of my involvement in 2023, the team had a selected experience direction, modular UX architecture and roadmap for continued delivery.
Project Overview
The South African consumer credit portal served a market of more than 27 million credit-active consumers. Customers had varied financial circumstances, levels of credit confidence and needs for support, making a generic credit experience insufficient.
Local language, financial behaviours and expectations needed to shape the initial product, while reusable modules supported the broader platform strategy.
My Role and Leadership Scope
As Senior Manager, UX and Strategy, I led a US-based designer and Canadian researcher, both direct reports, and partnered closely with the product owner in South Africa. I set the research direction, experience architecture and modularity strategy, while giving each discipline clear ownership of its work.
The researcher planned and conducted the study, producing the detailed report. The designer developed visual components and interaction patterns within the direction I established. I connected their work to product priorities, reviewed it for coherence and used the evidence to guide decisions with regional and global leaders.
I also created the experience roadmap and made the case that cloud-platform integration needed an experience layer: shared components, UX practices and clear contribution principles that would help regional teams build from one another’s work.
The Problem
The technical direction was clear: global consumer systems would move under a shared cloud platform. The experience direction was not. Without a common UX architecture, regional products could reproduce the fragmentation of the legacy environment within the new technical platform.
The South African market added another layer of complexity. Customers had different levels of credit confidence, financial pressure and readiness to act. The team needed to determine which audiences should shape the initial product and how the portal could turn credit information into actionable next steps.
The challenge was to balance regional relevance with global reuse: a product that reflected local language, financial behaviour and customer expectations, supported by reusable components and practices that could extend to future regions.
Strategic Response
I focused on three connected decisions: use research to define the initial product scope, design a modular experience for regional flexibility, and make shared UX practices part of platform integration.
Make research the basis for product scope
I framed the research around customer context, credit behaviour, comprehension and desired support. The goal was to identify meaningful audience patterns and use them to prioritize the initial product, rather than starting with a broad list of features.
Design for regional flexibility
I defined an architecture in which score interpretation, recommendations, education and account capabilities could be assembled from reusable modules. This gave the South African experience room to respond to local needs while remaining compatible with a shared platform.
Integrate UX practices with the cloud platform
I positioned the design system as part of the platform strategy. Shared components, interaction rules and contribution practices could reduce duplication and help regional teams build from one another’s work. The roadmap connected those foundations to future research and release priorities.
Research and Key Insights
The researcher conducted remote sessions with participants representing the relevant consumer profiles. We began with five potential audience segments and used the findings to identify the three groups that gave the strongest direction for the initial experience.
Three audiences clarified the product opportunity
The prioritized groups were the Early Career Professional, the Young Professional and the Hard-Working Busy Family. They represented different levels of credit confidence, financial pressure and readiness to act. The segments connected product priorities to recognizable customer circumstances.
Score labels needed to support action
Credit terminology could sound final or judgmental. We refined labels toward Room for Improvement, Needs Attention and Early Stages. The language created space for guidance and helped customers understand a score as a condition they could respond to.
Recommendations required context
Customers needed to understand why an action mattered and how it related to their situation. This shaped the relationship between score status, explanation, recommended steps and educational content.
Key Decisions and Execution
Select an experience direction
The team explored three experience directions and assessed them against the research themes and platform constraints. I guided the selection of the direction that best balanced clear score interpretation, actionable guidance and reusable modules.
Delegate within a shared strategy
I set the experience architecture and roadmap. The designer developed the components and interface details; I reviewed how they worked together, whether regional teams could reuse them and how they reflected the research. The researcher kept our decisions connected to participant behaviour.
Build a reusable foundation
The resulting system included reusable score treatments, recommendation modules, educational-content patterns and account structures. It created a foundation for the South African portal and a practical model for integrating future regional design work.
Outcomes and Impact
By the end of my involvement in 2023, the work had a validated audience strategy, a selected experience direction, a modular UX architecture and a roadmap for continued delivery.
The roadmap connected shared components and contribution practices to the cloud-platform plan, alongside clear responsibilities for research, design and regional product.
What This Changed
This was my first project leading a team distributed across three countries and balancing regional decision-making with global platform goals. It strengthened my approach to delegation: I set the research and architecture direction, while the researcher and designer owned the depth of their disciplines.
The case also clarified how I use UX strategy in platform work. Technical integration creates leverage when the experience layer has shared principles, reusable components and a roadmap grounded in customer evidence. My contribution was to connect those elements and give leadership a practical direction for the work that followed.
Evidence and Attribution
This case covers the research, design direction and roadmap completed before I left TransUnion in 2023, ahead of launch. Sources include project documentation and TransUnion market context from the engagement.