Northwestern Mutual

Spearheaded the full design process from ideation to launch, translating ideas into tangible experiences via journey maps, UX flows, interface design, and rapid prototyping.

Influenced strategic decision-making through close collaboration with PM and Engineering partners, aligning roadmap priorities with measurable outcomes and organizational goals.

Worked alongside a researcher to uncover user insights, converting findings into design artifacts that refined product direction and validated experience improvements.

Used experimentation and feedback to evolve designs post-launch, optimizing for user satisfaction and long-term business outcomes.

My Role

Team Composition:

4 iOS & Android Developers · 2 Mobile PMs · 3 QA Engineers · 1 UX Researcher · 1 Data Analyst · 3 Web PMs & Designers across Insurance, Investments & Accounts

Unified design and development workflows through strong cross-functional partnerships, aligning teams around shared goals for usability and scalability.

Facilitated regular design syncs to share progress, collect insights, and drive alignment across teams and product verticals.

Orchestrated stakeholder alignment workshops to define vision, success metrics, and scope—building consensus and momentum from ideation to delivery.

User Flow & UX Mapping

Challenge

At the time, Northwestern Mutual lacked a mobile client experience. The existing web platform was static, non-responsive, and required manual, in-person processes.

Clients relied on phone calls, emails, or paper documentation to manage their finances — creating friction, long turnaround times, and poor visibility into financial health.

• Digitize client operations and make interactions more efficient

• Allow clients to securely share sensitive financial documents with their representative

• Enable clients to understand their full financial picture — from spending habits to net worth, investments, and insurance applications

• Streamline bill payments and other routine transactions

Core Business Needs

• Modernize and digitize the client experience

• Empower financial representatives with more efficient client interactions

• Integrate financial planning, investment tracking, and insurance management into one cohesive product

Problem Framing & Sketches

Connect & Collaborate with Your Advisor

Objective: Strengthen client–advisor relationships through a single, secure communication and document hub.

Solution: Designed an integrated contact and document-sharing ecosystem that replaced fragmented channels with a seamless in-app experience.

• Clients can call, email, or chat with their advisor directly and use Secure Share to upload and exchange encrypted, SEC-compliant documents.

• A centralized document hub lets users easily view, organize, and filter files — eliminating friction and offline back-and-forth.

Track Your Spending

Objective: Give clients actionable insights into their financial habits.

Solution: Integrated Plaid for external account connections, auto-categorized monthly spending, and provided visual insights to help clients stay on budget. The design centers around a color-coded circular chart that simplifies complex data into an intuitive summary.

• Clients wanted insight into spending habits to meet financial goals.

• Integrated Plaid to allow clients to connect external bank accounts securely.

• Automatically categorized transactions and provided actionable insights.

• Enabled representatives to offer better guidance based on a holistic view of client finances.

Wireframes

Financial Overview & Net Worth

Objective: Give clients a clear, real-time understanding of their financial health by bringing together their assets, liabilities, insurance, and cash flow into one centralized view.

Solution: Designed the “Overview” dashboard — the app’s home experience — to present at-a-glance summaries of assets, liabilities, insurance, and cash flow, turning fragmented data into a cohesive, actionable financial snapshot.

• Built secure account aggregation flows that allow clients to link their bank, credit card, and investment accounts.

• Enabled real-time net worth tracking so users can visualize changes over time and plan more effectively.

• Empowered clients with a complete financial picture for smarter, more personalized financial planning.

Bill Pay

Objective: Simplify premium and loan payments for clients.

Solution: Replaced manual checks and bank transfers with a streamlined payment experience. Clients could now pay bills, set up autopay, and view payment history — all from within the app.

• Clients could previously only send checks or wire payments manually.

• Designed a secure, intuitive interface for paying bills, setting up autopay, and tracking upcoming payments.

• Simplified complex financial interactions, reducing friction and operational costs.

Investment Performance

Objective: Help clients monitor their portfolio and performance in real-time.

Solution: Designed a data-rich yet digestible interface for viewing market value changes, asset allocation, and rate of return. Clean visualizations communicate performance trends at a glance.

Insurance Application Tracker

Objective: Improve transparency for clients during the insurance application process.

Solution: Designed an application progress tracker showing real-time status updates and next steps. This feature drastically reduced support calls and improved user confidence.

• Onboarding and insurance applications were slow and paper-based.

• Created a tracker for clients to monitor the status of their applications in real time.

• Increased transparency and reduced follow-up calls to representatives.

Outcomes

• All new clients were onboarded through the app, establishing a consistent mobile-first experience.

• Existing clients transitioned through a nationwide campaign with thousands of financial representatives.

This project was transformative — not just for Northwestern Mutual, but for my career as a design leader. It challenged me to:

• Digitized key processes that were previously manual, improving client satisfaction and operational efficiency.

• Established the foundation of Northwestern Mutual’s digital transformation — integrating financial planning, insurance, and investments into a unified mobile ecosystem.

Designing Northwestern Mutual’s first mobile app was a pivotal experience, combining strategic thinking, user-centered design, and technical collaboration to create a product that transformed how clients interact with their finances.

The result was a product that redefined how clients and financial representatives connect — bringing trust, transparency, and accessibility to wealth management.

Reflection

• Translate complex financial systems into intuitive, human-centered experiences.

• Drive product strategy and collaboration across diverse teams.

• Balance business goals, compliance requirements, and user empathy in every design decision.

• Lead design for a complex, regulated financial product from scratch.

• Translate business objectives into user-centered experiences.

• Balance security, usability, and visual clarity in financial tools.

• Collaborate across multiple teams to deliver a cohesive, large-scale product.