* Details omitted due to NDA. Reach out for more information!*

Accounting ecosystem: a strategic overhaul

Overview

As a Senior Product Designer at Capital One supporting our Dealer accounting tools, I led a strategic initiative to modernize the accounting suite and strengthen the financial ecosystem between Capital One and its dealer partners. My work focused on helping the team gain a deep understanding of our dealer customers, define a clear experience strategy, and build a focused roadmap that aligns business goals with user needs.

Through research-backed decision-making, cross-functional strategy workshops, and rapid design iteration, I designed an end-to-end accounting suite overhaul projected to digitize 50% of collections and reduce outstanding collections to below $1 million.

Role

UX researcher, strategist, & service designer

Timeline

September 2024 - present

Deliverables

Research findings, personas, competitive analysis, feature prioritization, vision cast

The problem

  • Outstanding collections: Every month, there were $2M of overdue collections

  • Low adoption rate: Core features had less than 20% adoption

  • Confusing payment methods:

    • Different collections had their own notification and payment processes.

    • Dealers could not pay online.

    • Not all collections were available on the Accounting platform.

The challenge

My challenge was to drive a strategic transformation, ensuring alignment across product, engineering, and research while delivering a seamless accounting ecosystem.

Process

  • Research

    I began the project by conducting focused research with dealership accountants, an audience that typically receives limited direct engagement from our teams.

    Through seven in-depth interviews, I uncovered critical pain points, clarified unmet needs, and developed a deeper understanding of their day-to-day workflows.

  • Team Ideation Workshops

    Leveraging early research insights, I facilitated two cross-functional ideation workshops with a total of 26 participants.

    Together, we generated a broad range of concepts related to awareness, digital payments, title perfection, and communication improvements.

  • Prioritization

    After synthesizing ideas from the workshops, I led two prioritization sessions to evaluate each concept against customer value, business impact, and level of effort.

    This structured approach enabled the team to align on the highest-value opportunities and establish a clear roadmap for the next phase of execution.

  • Vision Alignment

    To ensure long-term alignment, I facilitated three additional workshops to craft a cohesive vision story outlining the ideal end-to-end dealer journey.

    This vision detailed the key touchpoints required to bring our new concepts to life. Several elements, including in-app notifications and streamlined payment requests, were delivered in 2025.

  • Design & Testing

    I redesigned the dealer accounting suite and conducted usability testing with dealer partners to validate the new experience.

    Feedback was highly positive, reinforcing that the redesigned interface meaningfully simplifies key workflows and strengthens our partnership with dealers. I look forward to seeing the solution implemented in market.

Outcomes (so far)

  • Influenced 80% of the 2026 roadmap with accounting suite enhancements.

  • A digital payments feature that allows dealers to pay via ACH, dealer reserve, or check. This is expected to reduce outstanding collections to under $1 million. (Handoff)

  • Notifications that alert dealers to new collections, bonus compensation, and unperfected titles. (Production)

  • A payment request form that enables internal associates to pay dealers on an ad hoc basis, which will allow over 1,000+ transactions to be processed with minimal agent oversight. (Production)

Next steps

I'm currently partnering with product and tech to create research spikes to start looking at backend implementation.

Lessons learned

Designing within a fragmented ecosystem requires strategic thinking.
With over 10 teams and 4 platforms involved, success hinged on designing for scalability and consistency across systems. Including key stakeholders from each team built buy-in early and maintained alignment.

Change management is part of the design process.
Redesigning core accounting tools impacts internal workflows, making it essential to think holistically.

Buy-in is earned through clarity and communication.
Gaining support for the redesign required clearly articulating the strategy, value, and long-term impact to leadership and collaborators.

  *Details omitted due to NDA. Reach out for more information!*