TBS Get Paid Application

TBS Get Paid Web/Mobile application
Company: TBS Factoring Company LLC.
Role: UI/UX designer

2021 - 2024

Core Goal

To maintain consistency of established branding and design of Get Paid web and mobile applications.

Wireframe and Library Maintenance

As the new UI/UX Designer, I switched gears from building a web/mobile site to updating and maintaining an established, branded web application. Wireframes, branding, user flows and component libraries were housed in Figma. New products/services added were integrated into the application seamlessly while ensuring wireframes were updated in the currently displayed Get Paid applications.

Software Development

Building a new product to add to the Get Paid website was a collaborative team effort. That team consisted of stakeholders, product managers/owners, business analysts, a UI/UX designer, front-end developers, back-end developers, and QA testers. We worked in the following step-by-step process:

Step 1 - Projects were determined by our stakeholders and relayed to our product owners.

Step 2 - Product owners worked with our business analysts to gather requirements from stakeholders and relevant departments. As the UI/UX Designer, I would get requests to sit in requirement gathering meetings in case there were specifications for design.

Step 3 - A Jira ticket would be made by our Product Owner or Business Analyst and would assign it to the UI/UX Designer with a required deadline and priority status. Deadlines would be placed within a sprint or more based on current workload.

Step 4 - UI/UX Designer would designs lo-fi wireframes organized with user flows according to the requirements that adhere to current design practices. After completion, a meeting was scheduled to present lo-fi wireframes to developers for tech analysis. Any changes to placement or user flows were determined.

Step 5 - After approval, UI/UX Designer would create hi-fi wireframes with design guides and branding. A meeting would be held with the Product Owner to double-check the design. After approval, the designer attached a link to design project within the Jira ticket and re-assign ticket to front-end developers.

Step 6 - Front-end and back-end developers would break down workload into tasks and assign tasks according to developer type through Jira. Code was built referring to designs and user flow which were made in developer environments.

Step 7 - After development was completed, QA testers would compare what was built against the design. Any corrections are reported to either the UI/UX designer or developers to fix.

Step 8 - Project was then set for a release update for the application.

Challenges

1. When I first joined, there was no clear process to achieve completing a software product since there had been a period when the process had been adapted to work in the absence of a designer. Unfortunately, wireframes did not reflect what was current on the app and business analysts were not doing detailed requirement gathering.
   Solution: I met with the project manager, product owner and head of business analysts to address my concerns and present a new process structure. We adopted the new process.

2. There was little customer input to help with making and monitoring the changes we added to the application.
   Solution: We consulted with the customer service department for their input in identifying issues with the user interface and flow. Profiles were then constructed based on their feedback of each client type.

3. When the process flow was eventually updated, there was friction within the team and project leads during the adjustment period.
   Solution: We set weekly/biweekly meetings with software teams to make sure communication was clear, and proper deadlines were set to meet demand. Scheduled demos also helped with transparency of progress made for our stakeholders.