Chipper Cash

Director of Design

on leadership, design thinking, and
building powerful design teams

Highlights

We knew that Chipper’s user experience and design of the app needed a lot of improvement. Our team launched a number of initiatives to redo our entire product and brand design from the ground up. This included launching a full rebrand; reworking our onboarding process, home screen, and send features; as well as doubling down on creating a robust design system.

We worked with Studio Dumbar to imagine what a Chipper world might look like. Ultimately, we chose specific elements of Africanfuturism: technology, optimism, empowerment - to guide the visual philosophy behind our rebrand.

We also created an interactive prototype that we could test for feedback with stakeholders and customers. Using customer feedback, we designed a new look that was simpler, easier to navigate, and guided users towards a smoother journey to send their funds.

Case Study: Designing Chipper 2.0

How I guided our team in designing Chipper 2.0 with three concurrent initiatives: customer segmentation, "Home Screen" and "Send" redesign, while preparing the company for a future reboot of the design system in parallel.

I wore multiple hats during this time, from roadmapping and stakeholder management as a project manager, to being a product designer on rough prototypes, to workshop host, to user interviewer and researcher.
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1. Discovery: Segmentation and proto-personas

I lead our team through conducting user research on cross border users in Nigeria and Uganda. We first formed our hypotheses (or "sacrificial concepts") by interviewing Chipper country directors and gathering insights from their market experience. Once we had a better understanding of specific market needs, we used targeted questions to craft surveys and recruit interview participants in their respective markets.

We grouped our cross border users into multiple groups: students, suppliers, salaried employees, agents, and parents - to name a few. Of all the profiles, one user group particularly benefitted from Chipper's fast remittances to various markets: African freelancers. These customers often have employers or clientele from different countries, were more tech savvy (owned a smartphone), and wanted more ways to invest and spend.

Debriefing through our insights, we decided to shift our focus from both Nigerian and Ugandan users to Ugandan freelancers alone, as Uganda was a more stable market for Chipper to test on.

2. Define: Linking user and business needs
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After narrowing our user profile, I coordinated with stakeholders across Chipper to identify a operationally feasible and business viable solution. My team and I took turns leading workshops and interviews across intelligence, engineering, compliance, operations, revenue, and product teams.

We discovered that customers often glossed over the "send" feature on the home page, had difficulty understanding what "send to bank/mobile money" meant, and also experienced a number of technical difficulties throughout their journey. At the same time, Chipper has to comply with complex local regulation that frequently impeded the customer journey.

From these insights, we envisioned what a successful Chipper 2.0 looked like: A simple, fast, and seamless experience that allows Ugandan users to transfer funds cross-border, while also complying with regulatory requirements.

The cherry on top? We also needed this MVP to be deployed within the quarter.

3. Design: Prototypes and staggered roadmaps
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Designing Chipper 2.0 was a twofold operation. We needed a Home Screen with a clear call to action to use our "send" feature, and then a simple remittance flow for any local or international transfer.

With such tight deadlines and limited engineering bandwidth, our strategy was to stagger concurrent roadmaps, and ship designs on an iterative basis. Our designers focused on designing a cleaner and more intuitive interface. For example, our poor color hierarchy often mislead users into thinking we were an airtime purchasing platform.

We collaborated with other departments to ensure legal and technical feasibility. My Design Lead (Jon) and I also spearheaded product design exploration sessions in preparation for a new design system. Concurrently, I continued to refine our customer insights on Ugandan users with our UX and data analytics team.

4. Develop: Test and iterate
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The team narrowed down two prototypes to test: one where the user selected the receiving country first, and another where the user selected the receiving method (bank, mobile money, ewallet) first. Our hypothesis was that Ugandan freelancers with multinational clientele would opt for country selection first.

Based on the 4 additional internal users and 8 external users we interviewed, the feedback we received leaned towards country selection first. In addition, users wanted to see the methods and fees earlier in the flow, the total amount to pay before confirmation screen, and had positive comments on the name lookup feature.

5. Deliver: Ship and listen
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Our designs were finalized in March, limited engineering bandwidth meant we had to stagger deployment. In Q2 2023, we shipped the first iteration of our designs, which included a cleaner home screen. Over the next few months, the team will continue to update the send flow and continue to test and iterate our designs.

In the latest design, we grouped international and local payments in one flow. Exchange rates and fees are more visible, and users can see a list of people they've sent to previously. Copy was updated for sending to Banks and Mobile Money, and the entire layout was updated to be more consistent with our existing Chipper UI.

Structured to perform

The Chipper Cash design team consisted of 15 global designers across multiple disciplines: user research, design systems, branding, graphic design, product design, internal tooling, and content design.

We operate on the “centralized partnership” model from Peter Merholz’s Org Design for Design Orgs. Chipper’s entire design team nested under the Product department, but we define our own team objectives. Designers have a constant backlog of tasks internally and from other departments, so being autonomous allowed us to prioritize critical initiatives to Chipper, and say “no” to less important requests.

Processes and Rituals

📝 Design Planning

A weekly meeting for all designers to share progress on last week's goals, update on new goals, identify opportunities to collaborate.

🌟 Design Critique

A creative and respectful feedback session where designers share work in progress designs for their teammates to review

🦄 Design Jam

We spend 15 minutes untangling an important Chipper problem. Designers then get 40 minutes of heads down time to jam and design.

💟 Human Time

A weekly highlight, where we share team announcements, have team icebreakers, and bond together over a question, game, or activity

⏳All Team Retros

Monthly retroactive where we come together as a team and determine what worked, what didn’t work, and lessons we learned

🔎 Meeting Audit

Quarterly meeting audit to to remove, redesign, or rearrange existing meetings

A Culture of Empathy

Ultimately, none our achievements would have been as effective without a healthy internal design team culture built around trust and respect. We prioritize a culture that allows our designers to grow their skills and progress in their careers. The main values that I lead our team with were empathy, transparency, accountability, and respect.

Leading with empathy meant prioritizing building transparent structures around career discussions. Our “Career Guide” was a collaborative document that specified transparent steps on the skills and expertise needed to level up in each design area. With empathy as our foundation, we could push deeper into technical or relational challenges together.

On any given week, the entire design team meets at least 3 times to hang out with each other, critique work in progress, plan the week, or review the previous week in a retro.