0-1 PRODUCT BUILD STORY

Utility Payment Experience Design

AI powered one-stop platform to help customers manage and explore payment options effortlessly.
My Role
Design & Research Lead
Duration
JUL 2023 - MAR 2024 (9 Months)
OVERVIEW
In 2023, I led the design team for one of North America's largest utility companies to tackle a persistent challenge: helping customers struggling to pay their bills ("Issues Paying My Bill"). Despite years of investment in improving customer experience, significant gaps remained.

This case study showcases how we reimagined the payment process, delivering a seamless and user-focused experience that bridged key pain points and enhanced overall satisfaction. 
Project roadmap overview
My role as design lead in this team
The dilemma the company has suffered for long time
Research
The goal of this stage was to uncover why customers face challenges in bill payments and use those insights to create personas and user journeys. To achieve this, I developed interview guides and conducted in-depth research.
What have we done during Discover Phase
Interviews conducted with SMEs and agents from call center
Interviews with users who is tech savvy (left) and have vision impairment (right)
Given the complexity of industry terminology and program structures (a challenge for both our team and customers), I interviewed SMEs from key departments—Call Center, QA, Credit & Collection, and Energy Assistance Advocacy. Understanding the business flow helped us identify critical gaps and uncover missing touchpoints in the customer journey, allowing us to design better solutions that bridge users to available support.
In each interview, we used Miro board to take notes
Insights
From our research, we developed three key personas and their user journeys, forming the foundation of our Vision Workshop—our first major milestone.
Challenge: The client’s product and design teams had never built personas or user journeys from scratch. As a design coach, I led Design 101 sessions, guiding them step by step through co-creation workshops.
6 key theme we summarized based on interview insights
I conducted persona 101 session for client's core working team
At the end of the Discover phase, we hosted a Vision Workshop with 40+ key stakeholders, introducing our findings and engaging them in exercises like empathy mapping and "How Might We..." ideation. For many, this was their first hands-on design session, and their contributions sparked valuable ideas, shaping the next phase of our product journey.
3 core personas we generated based on the research
Sample journey mapping of one of the persona Cathy
Full day Vision Workshop with 40+ SMEs to generate ideas
MVP Features
After the Vision Workshop, I led the team in categorizing the generated ideas into themes.
Challenge: Aligning everyone on key features was difficult, but the intense discussions helped the core team gain a deeper understanding of each feature’s value. By the end, everyone could confidently advocate for their importance to stakeholders.
The 3-step approach to featurize desired functions
Daily battles while we tried to group ideas for viability/feasibility evaluation
Through structured working sessions, we:
1. Drafted feature groups for potential inclusion in the MVP launch.
2. Conducted feasibility and value evaluations with business and engineering teams to prioritize themes effectively.

This process ensured that we moved forward with well-defined, high-impact features that balanced user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.
Remote working session with stakeholders
Final set of new features
The Northstar
To bridge gaps in the bill payment experience, I created a Future State Journey and Concept Cards to illustrate how new features enhance customer satisfaction. These visuals helped leadership and stakeholders grasp the impact of our design decisions.
Future state journey we made to serve as the northstar for this project
Sample concept card of 'One-Stop-Shop' we used in MVP workshop
At the end of the Design Phase, we conducted our second major session—the MVP Workshop—where we presented these concepts to key stakeholders. The goal was to secure buy-in and collaboratively evaluate features using a value/feasibility matrix, ensuring prioritization was objective and aligned across departments.
Initial mockups I created for other concepts
Viability / Feasiblity mapping we conducted with stakeholders in MVP workshop
Build Features
Following the MVP Workshop, we aligned on two key focus areas for the next four months. The team split into two squads, with me leading the design of OSS while also supervising both product designs.
Challenge: The client’s team was accustomed to monthly releases and had never worked in an agile environment. To bridge this gap, I:
1. Established a sprint-based design process and standardized design handoff.
2. Set up a recruitment funnel and cadence for long-term team growth beyond my involvement.
Two key features we decided to focus on in the next 4 months
Testing and review cadence we set up to ensure the design is aligned with the needs
Frequent feedback from users, stakeholders, and internal teams meant continuous iterations. However, reviews often happened in parallel or were delayed, impacting design handoff and development timelines. Proactively managing these dependencies was crucial to maintaining project momentum.
Unmoderated testing conducted on UserZoom
Moderated testing conducted via zoom call with real customers
Launched Product
Overview
Case Study
Final Designs
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