Accounts & Transfers Visibility
Redesigned how clients find and manage in-progress onboarding and money-movement tasks by unifying status + next steps into a consistent, dashboard-first model.
Client
Vanguard
Services
Product Design
Experience Strategy
Systems + Information Architecture
Duration
In progress (work completed to date)
At a glance
Problem: Drafts and transfer status are fragmented across surfaces, increasing uncertainty, abandonment, and support burden.
Role: Senior UX Designer leading strategy + system definition across onboarding, transfers/rollovers, and logged-in experience.
Solution (work to date): Unified in-progress model + scalable entry points (dashboard + nav + account-level) with clearer progress cues and next steps.
Summary
This in-progress redesign makes long-running workflows (open, transfer, rollover) feel findable, legible, and trustworthy. I’m reframing “drafts” into an in-progress ecosystem—defining shared status rules, mapping states, and designing reusable patterns that reduce hunting and help clients resume with confidence.
Top Metrics
Baseline: 16% draft retrieval; 9% draft completion (new account applications).
Research signal: ~1/3 of usability test participants are unsuccessful due to wayfinding when checking money-movement status/next steps.
Leading indicator: 14% in-progress status visitation rate is associated with a +2% completion increase and ~30% reduction in calls (alongside other wayfinding work).
Metrics shown are baseline/leading indicators; final outcomes will be reported post-rollout.
The Problem
Clients expect in-progress work to be easy to find from a single, predictable place. Today, drafts and status are split across journeys with inconsistent entry points and uneven progress cues—driving uncertainty, abandonment, and support contacts.
The current retrieval pattern limits our ability to surface the best next step, provide contextual help, or communicate expiration risk consistently. In other words: the UI is a symptom of a deeper issue—in-progress work doesn’t have a shared home or shared rules across journeys.
the impact
Status: In progress — outcomes will be reported post-rollout.
Success criteria we’re measuring
More clients find transfer/onboarding status from the dashboard without hunting or calling support
Increased resumption and completion of in-progress tasks; fewer expirations/timeouts
Fewer wayfinding failures in usability testing and fewer support contacts tied to “where is my status?”
Improved confidence and clarity themes in feedback
