OVERVIEW: Academic Capstone Project with ACME

The project goal was to design the analytic and operational UX’s for a credit card fraud detection call center solution supporting the roles of the call center manager.

The principles of game theory (within interaction design) were applied to both the manager and investigator experience to achieve the ACME Corporation's productivity, ROI, and job retention goals.

DURATION

3 Months (Sep-Dec 2024)

ADVISOR

Prof. Daniel Rosenberg

IMPACT

I led the operational UX dashboard design of quick, at-a-glance analytics tools that enable call center managers to quickly gain data visual insights, take action, and make informed decisions, providing the ability to track the effectiveness and ROI of enterprise-level gamification with metrics (Productivity, Accuracy, Employee Teamwork, Employee Loyalty and Retention, Training Class Enrollment and Completion, Acceleration of New Employee Onboarding Process).

“The My Team Overview screen is very good. It supports the manager in competing with other managers and knowing where they stand. The gamification home screen was very creative and complete.”

- Prof. Daniel Rosenberg

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS & HIGH LEVEL GOALS FOR THE MANAGER UX?

At the beginning of the project, we reviewed the brief with the ACME PM, and I was given a list of high-level goals to clarify the direction.

  • Design Information Architecture and User Experience: Create a seamless information architecture and user experience that enables managers to review operational, statistical, and forecasting data related to case investigators and daily call center case processing.

  • Facilitate Data-Driven Decision Making: Provide quick, at-a-glance analysis tools with the capability to dive deeper into data, empowering managers to make informed decisions and take actionable steps based on specific datasets and events.

  • Optimize Fraud Strategy Management: Enhance how managers view and interact with the current fraud strategy—comprising both team performance and technology/AI models—enabling them to make real-time adjustments to improve outcomes and team performance.

  • Incorporate Enterprise Gamification: Foster a sense of reward and accountability by integrating gamification elements. Encourage friendly competition to motivate teams to meet or exceed their KPIs, driving engagement and alignment with the company mission.

HOW I DEFINED SUCCESS FOR THE MANAGER UX?

This project was my Capstone Project at San Jose State University with ACME, designed to synthesize my academic learnings and apply them to solve a real-world-inspired UX challenge. Success was defined based on user-centered design principles and anticipated outcomes judged by key stakeholders. Here’s how I structured the success criteria:

1. Enhanced Operational Efficiency: The system should empower managers to analyze data quickly and take immediate action, reducing inefficiencies in their daily workflows.

  • Success Criteria:

    • Simplified workflows designed to minimize the time needed to access critical data and take action.

    • Intuitive navigation that reduces cognitive load.

2. Empowered Data-Driven Decision Making: Managers should be able to make informed decisions based on real-time data visualizations and analytics.

  • Success Criteria:

    • Clear and visually compelling data visualization that highlight key metrics, trends, and anomalies.

    • Real-time strategy adjustment tools integrated into the interface.

3. Motivation and Alignment with Business Goals: Manager screens should be Increase in KPI achievement rates due to gamification features.

  • Success Criteria:

    • Features that align individual team performance, consistently exceeding ROI while directly contributing to the company’s strategic objectives.

    • Evidence of gamification fostering improved team dynamics and alignment with broader company goals (reducing fraud rates, improving operational efficiency).

MY ROLE

  • UX/UI Design Lead (for Managers)

  • Building Conceptual Models

  • Prototyping

  • Information Architecture

  • Data Visualization

TEAM

Poorva Jain (Designer for Agents) Yunjin Yeom (Designer for Managers)

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

ACME is a San Jose based decision analytics company with offices around the world. For the last 25 years, ACME has worked with some of the world’s largest credit card companies to screen transactions and highlight suspicious activity using a software product called Phoenix. ACME is in the process of developing a new SAS platform to replace Phoenix to provide innovative new features and wants to delight its customers/users with powerful & intuitive features while enabling them to be faster and more precise in responding to suspected credit card fraud and the process of resolving it with direct account holder contact.

Let’s dive into the art of the problem-solving process.

DESIGN PROCESS: How did I tackle the problems?

JTBD: Why JTBD Matters for Janine?

Since this is an enterprise product, I implemented JTBD because it provides a language for stakeholder alignment and a lens for problem-solving, and jobs are stable over time, even as technology changes. Through this process, I discovered that Janine juggles numerous daily tasks, often under time pressure. Therefore, to empower her, the design must offer a clear and intuitive system—a well-structured ‘grammar’, which is the basis of conscious thought and will help her to execute daily tasks with minimal cognitive loads, rather than navigating complexity.

PERSONA: Understanding Janine, the Manager

Now, imagine yourself as Janine, a manager at ACME.

Your goal is to actively monitor the operational ecosystem.

Let me show you how my design can achieve that goal.

UX CONCEPTUAL MODEL GRMMAR DESIGN:

A UX Conceptual Model is expressed through interaction mechanisms and visual abstractions by which users accomplish tasks the application is intended to support.

Words that are carefully framed and spoken are the most powerful means of communication.

Objects-Actions Matrix

To focus on the task domain and satisfy the users goals, I translated user stories into CM grammar by leveraging the user terminology. (Objects, Actions, and Attributes) First, I prioritized Actions & Objects by frequency of use, creating consistent grammar and taxonomy, and iterated to find the most compact and consistent working set. As a result, it reduced the cognitive load of users, which loads on human memory of Actions + Objects, I designed a dense matrix as below

Priority Matrix

Prioritize the manager’s main tasks; the frequent tasks were the foundations of dashboard design.

Attributes List

After understanding the managers' goals, I properly selected and aggregated the data through the Anatomy of Quantitative Data: "Measures" (what you measure), such as volume, speed, reliability, accuracy, risk, quality, quantity, and "Unit/Value", such as count, percentage, and rate. When the grammar (conceptual model+measures and units) is completely fixed, the design makes sense and is firm.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Information Architecture is the structural design of shared information environments and the synthesis of organization, labeling, search, and navigation (browse). To lower the users’ cognitive load and avoid the higher cost of not finding information, I designed it to focus on shaping information for usability, “findability” & understanding.

Users encounter 3 types of IA experiences: 1. Word design; 2. Browse interaction; 3. Search interaction. So I attempted to design these explicitly to reinforce the UX design system as follows:

    1. Word Design

    Audience: ACME managers who have to monitor operational ecosystem and track the effectiveness and ROI of the gamification.

    Goal: The goal of ACME word design for managers is to help them call to action at a glance, and to make decisions by providing them with clear and intuitive data visualization. It allows managers to control, encourage, and nurture employees effectively in the corporate level.

    1-1) Voice

    The voice is clear and action-inspiring to encourage positive changes in manpower management based on data-driven sources (graphs and charts over time) The focus is on increasing ROI by tracking investigator performance and ensuring the game's effectiveness through enterprise gamification. Recommendations on the dashboard give directions to managers on how to control the manpower effectively. The messages are personal while maintaining professionalism. Help to communicate and build trust. Helpful and reliable in providing insights about cases that are simple and logical.

    ACME offers the following guidelines on voice.

    When ACME content is at its best:

    • It has a clear and provides unique point of view (recommendations/insights from collected data).

    • It’s simple and supportive.

    • It is grounded in thorough comprehensive data and detailed analysis.

    • It’s concrete facts and measurable outcomes.

    1-2) Tone

    Tone describes how the ACME voice is expressed, and as such it can adapt to different situations. For example, the words chosen for detailed ROI tracking differ greatly from words you might see in an onboarding flow. The tone of error messages is economical and direct, and they are often written in short phrases instead of sentences. Onboarding flows typically take a little more time, with full sentences and friendly explanations.

    The underlying voice in each case is consistent, but with different word choices and a different sentence structure, the style and tone adapt.

    1-3) Vocabulary

    The vocabulary is consistent with the voice and tone guidelines and making use of industry terms like fraud, case, model, transaction, etc. to represent the typical elements encountered by the users.

  • 2-1) IA organization system

    The goals of ACME IA organization system are to support usability, findability, and understanding.

    On the dashboard design, a topical organization scheme was used for the universe of content (e.g., queue, agent, model, and rewards) the manager would expect to find (present and future) within that area of the system.

    This approach to the IA organization system reinforces the manager’s main focus: accessing harmonized data, quickly analyzing insights, and making informed, confident decisions.

    2-2) Labeling system

    Labelling: CTA labels- The CTA labels and buttons follow IBM’s style guide, short and impactful, intended to communicate a lot using few words.

    The labeling system ensures that the terms used on the dashboard are clear, consistent, and easy to understand.

    Success message: The language and design follows voice and tone guidelines. The messages have a timestamp that specify when the case was completed and provides confidence in the system.

    Navigation: Navigation labels of overview and case are provided to go back to dashboard from any page of access the current case page. There are also back buttons and breadcrumbs to aid in navigation

  • 3-1) Search types: There is a global search bar present in the top navigation as well as a local search bar above the table to allow investigator to search anywhere in the flow.

    An unstructured search is used, which is, keywords or normal language is used. We enter keywords or search terms in the search bar and hit enter, this initiates a 5-step search flow

    Search Flow:

    1. Formulation: Type "Flagged Cases" in the global search bar..

    2. Initiation Action: Hit the "enter" key.

    3. Review Results: View all the various results you get from your search term. There are 300 Results displayed.

    4. Refining: To further reduce the results, we can refine them based on the various filters available, as needed.

    5. Utilise: Take further action by viewing a case and doing the intended action in the relevant page.

    3-2) Filter types: The filters are provided in 2 primary loactions. 1. The search resukt page and 2. Local filters for the case tables.

    In both scenarios, the filters are based on the case attributes.

    3-3) Sorting logic (e.g. newest/oldest, best/worst): For investigator, cases that have been sitting in the queue longest are first in the table that shows the cases that they need to work on. Time spent in queue acts as the sorting logic.

    The default sorting logic for their search results in the above scenario is newest to oldest which can further be sorted based on multiple options.

FINAL DASHBOARD DESIGN & PROTOTYPE: So did my design help Janine achieve her goals?

Let’s see how my design solutions helped her achieve her goals.

OVERVIEW

AGENT

REWARDS

REWARDS SETTING

WHAT I LEARNED

📈 Prioritize ROI in Enterprise Dashboard Design

While designing for manager roles, I focused on understanding stakeholder priorities and business impact. By identifying what stakeholders value most—like data clarity, efficiency, and actionable insights—I was able to prioritize key features that directly contribute to business goals, ensuring the design aligned with both user needs and organizational objectives.

✨Trust the Process✨

This project reminded me of the essence of trusting the process. Design outcomes don’t appear instantly; they emerge gradually, shaped by deliberate choices and accumulated iterations at every step. It is through this progression that systems take form and designs find their purpose.

🪄Iteration is Key

In UX design, the path to the best results lies in constant testing and refinement. Growth happens through repetition and learning from trial and error. A single failure isn’t a true failure—it’s a necessary step toward a better process and ultimately, a better solution.