Company
USAA
Product
Bank Transaction Disputes
Role
Senior UX Designer
Audience
Bank Members & Service Representatives
Project Background
Transaction disputes occur when a cardholder contests a charge on their credit or debit card, typically due to issues like unauthorized transactions (fraud), billing errors, or dissatisfaction with goods or services (non-fraud). The process involves the cardholder notifying their bank, providing evidence, and the bank investigating to resolve the issue, often involving the merchant and payment networks.
My team was approached to improve an outdated dispute reporting experience for our users and our customer support in order to meet business and Bank objectives to reduce call volumes, increase accurate reporting and customer satisfaction ratings.
The Problem
The online transaction dispute resolution process failed to meet user needs due to outdated design elements, including non-mobile-friendly interfaces and excessive legal jargon, which confused users and obscured the distinctions between dispute types. This complexity not only hindered completion of the intake form but also left users without clear post-submission expectations or progress tracking, resulting in elevated call volumes to customer support and diminished trust in the digital experience.
The Goal
Redesign transaction disputes into an intuitive, transparent, and mobile-friendly experience that empowers users to navigate the dispute process with confidence. Reduce call volumes, minimize erroneous reports, boost user satisfaction scores, decrease complaints, and foster trust through a seamless, user-centric flow.
The Process
⸺ Research & Discovery
To build a complete picture of the current pain points and opportunities, I led a comprehensive discovery phase that combined quantitative signals, qualitative insights, and internal expertise.
⸺ Journey Mapping
Created current-state journey and empathy maps using real user scenarios across channels to uncover pain points, emotional friction, and drop-off moments that drove call volume and eroded trust.
⸺ Human-Centered Design
Orchestrated human-centered design workshops for stakeholders, facilitating empathy mapping, idea vignettes, value-prop canvases, and impact/feasibility grids to align business, legal, engineering, and user needs through multiple working sessions.
⸺ Lo-Fi Wireframes & Validation Testing
Developed low-fidelity wireframes in Figma and conducted rapid user testing to validate ease of use and comprehension, measuring time-on-task and iterating quickly to eliminate minor pain points before moving to high-fidelity designs.
⸺ Executive & Legal Alignment
Secured stakeholder and legal buy-in for a highly regulated dispute experience by pairing user research insights with hard data in executive-level storytelling sessions that clearly demonstrated compliance-safe innovation and measurable business impact.
⸺ Hi-Fi Design & Prototypes
Crafted high-fidelity, mobile-first designs and interactive Figma prototypes that translated validated concepts into a clean, transparent, and visually reassuring dispute experience while maintaining full WCAG accessibility and brand consistency.
⸺ Design System Maturity
Identified and contributed new reusable dispute-specific components to USAA’s enterprise design system, ensuring consistency, accessibility, and faster future development across channels.
⸺ Managed Phased Delivery
Delivered the redesigned dispute experience through phased, cross-functional execution by co-creating design and feature roadmaps, contributing to bi-weekly backlog grooming and acceptance criteria, and partnering closely with development teams to ensure seamless, incremental launches.
Outcomes
35%
Year-over-year call reduction
42%
Decrease in time to complete dispute
$1.2M
Projected cost savings over 3 years.
Skills
User-Centered Design
End-to-End Product Design
Cross Functional Collaboration
Prototyping
UX Research
Roadmap & Requirement Planning
Information Architecture
Compliance-Safe Innovation
Interaction Design
Systems Thinking
Regulated-Environment Design
Executive Storytelling & Stakeholder Alignment
Tools Used
Figma
Figjam
Mural
Zoom
Slack
Keynote/Powerpoint
Box
Userzoom
Maze