Capital One

Modernizing a complex enterprise requirements ecosystem

Project overview

The problem

Years of platform growth had created fragmented workflows, outdated interaction patterns, and requirements managed across spreadsheets and legacy systems. Modernizing the experience meant simplifying workflows across three teams, four tools, and many meetings to manage ~17K requirements successfully.

Constraints

  • Multiple user groups (process managers, compliance, vertical risk advisors) entered and navigated the experience differently

  • Existing workflows and historical platform patterns needed to be considered

  • Complex legal and compliance requirements shaped the experience

  • Tight design and development timelines required rapid alignment and iteration

Solution

A redesigned requirements ecosystem that brings three teams, fragmented workflows, and legacy tools into a connected experience for managing enterprise legal and business requirements.

Role

Lead UX Strategist and product designer

Team

2 Product managers + 4 Developers

Tools

Figma Make, Figma, Lucid

 

Outcomes

 

4 → 1

Fragmented tools consolidated

~30%

Reduction in requirement processing time

60%

Reduction in manual tracking

My process

Mapping complex workflows to define the target state

The challenge extended beyond modernizing an existing application. Three teams participated in different parts of the requirements lifecycle, supported by a combination of RAMP, spreadsheets, legacy tools, and established processes.

I mapped how users entered and moved through the experience to understand their responsibilities, dependencies, and where workflows intersected.

 

Key challenges

  • Different user groups entered the platform at different stages of the workflow

  • Historical platform patterns didn't always support emerging user needs

  • Business and compliance requirements introduced complexity across workflows

Cross-functional workshops to align the system

I facilitated cross-functional alignment workshops with Product, Compliance, and other partners to establish a shared understanding of how the future experience should operate.

These conversations helped us move beyond individual team requirements and make decisions around a shared target-state experience.

 

Strategic decisions

  • Identified common patterns that could work across user groups

  • Defined where workflows needed to diverge based on user needs

  • Aligned Product and Compliance around the target-state experience

  • Established a core experience that could scale to additional workflows

Research to validate workflows and uncover opportunities

I conducted research with Product partners to understand existing workflows, pain points, and requirements.

I shared recommendations that connected user needs with broader system decisions and shared the research with Product and Risk leadership.

This gave stakeholders visibility not only into individual usability issues but also into how decisions in one part of the experience could affect the broader requirements ecosystem.

 

Key insights from process managers

  • The requirement dispute process lacks transparency and requires multiple systems to manage

  • Overwhelmed by requirement volume and lack of prioritization

Key insights from compliance

  • Legacy system lacks the flexibility to search for and edit questions

  • Sorting through 500+ questions leads to unmanageable duplicates

Key insights from vertical risk advisors

  • Legacy system lacks the flexibility to search for and edit questions

  • Managing statuses through spreadsheets is redundant

Rapid exploration and testing to accelerate design

I partnered with Product and Engineering to evaluate what should be preserved, standardized, modernized, or replaced.

With a tight timeline and multiple interconnected workflows to solve, I used Figma Make and Gemini to ideate solutions.

 

Process managers are able to complete requirement surveys in their home platform, reducing the number of systems to manage requirements.

Compliance and vertical risk advisors can manage requirements on one platform. Eliminating manual trackers.

Enhanced flexibility to sort through 500+ questions and AI recommendations to improve the survey creation process.

Strategy to delivery

After validating the initial experience direction, I transitioned the strategy, research insights, and design concepts to another designer, who carried the experience through detailed design and implementation.

 

Outcomes

My work established the experience strategy and target-state vision for a centralized requirements ecosystem. After defining and validating the initial concepts, I transitioned the work to another designer who evolved the strategy through detailed interaction design and finalization.

The resulting direction transformed how three teams manage enterprise legal and business requirements:

4 → 1

Fragmented tools consolidated

The target-state strategy consolidated four disconnected tools into one centralized requirements experience, reducing fragmentation across the end-to-end process.

~30%

Reduction in requirement processing time

Streamlined workflows and fewer system handoffs reduced the time required to process requirements by approximately 30%.

60%

Reduction in manual tracking

Centralizing requirement status, ownership, and workflows reduced reliance on spreadsheets and other manual tracking processes by 60%.