Building the design team

“Customer Experience Design”
Fannie Mae // Fall 2016 - Present
Team building, stakeholder management, partner relations

Early in 2015 I joined a small strike force tasked with planning for major changes as Fannie Mae left government conservatorship. We worked with internal technical teams and senior management to run a series of technology audits, co-creation sessions, and customer surveys. In the end we came to the conclusion that the company needed a dedicated customer experience team, rooted in human-centered design. The strike force was dissolved and a seasoned executive was chosen to launch the design team.

The Challenge

What did I know about design? I had spent the entirety of my career in the operations office, first supporting a servicing portfolio of hundred of customers, and then later, acting as product owner for a series of analytical reports for the department. How would I support this new team?

My Role

It didn’t take long to realize the skilled designers we started hiring needed a guide to financial services and the mortgage industry. Combining my knowledge of the business with their expertise in UI/UX, research, service design, illustration, etc, we generated a series of foundational materials: preliminary personas, customer journeys, ecosystem maps. These all helped the new designers to hit the ground running.

I also used my understanding the business to make connections to the rest of the enterprise and share out our new, unique value proposition. As we grew, I continued to provide my business knowledge, but also shifted more into the design side of the work. Over time, I became a design strategy manager, pitching work to partners, managing a team of designers, and continuing to drive the internal maturity of the team.

The Outcome

The team flourished, reaching nearly 100 designers in just a few years. Our team supported dozens of products and services around the enterprise, including our flagship digital products, and services that the president himself utilized. We delivered design thinking education to thousands of our colleagues. We pushed the company to be deliberate in its development, and to focus its efforts on the customer. Our work was recognized by industry thought leaders, won awards, and was published in research papers.

Design was the future and we were leading it.