Process

Product

Smartline Mortage broker platform
~Sydney / Xian

                    For 18 months I led the design team on a re-platform / rebuild project of Smartline’s core mortgage broker system. I was responsible for the strategic redesign of a product that replaced a 20 year old system. It enabled 500+ franchisees to manage and define product information, loan aggregation, client management, loan management and application tracking for their customers. Moving brokers from a tool they have used every day for 20+ years, to something new (daunting) and modern required a deep understanding of their processes, objectives and workflows, and a lot of compassion and kindness.

The new product enables the users to be more efficient, appear more professional with clients, and removes their technical frustrations and long wait times. I ran discovery phases alongside designing for continuous delivery, and created successful and innovative product release slices that meant our franchisees didn’t need to stop any work while we iteratively transitioned them to the product, funtion by funtion.

We spent time understanding the current user needs, actions, and pain points within the old system and transformed that into a modern web based product that helps mortgage brokers complete all of their daily tasks - redesigning useful functionality, and reimagining solutions to solve modern needs. I improved the management of research insights from 2 years of work with effective use modern tooling and changes to design team, and product team processes.

Advocating for the user while considering time and scope constraints, the business needs, and technical opportunities in the design of the product brings a need for strong collaboration across several streams of work, and carefully considered discovery. We worked closely with business analysts, the project manager and product managers from the client side, as well as the technologists, constantly looking for improvements to our processes and communications. I ran regular catchups and share backs with my design team and product manager to ensure the 30+ developer team was building a uniform and consistently designed product.

During my time with this client, the company rebranded to fit under their new parent companies brand. I worked with the parent company and our teams to bring their brand to life in our product.