Merrick Bank Credit Card Harmonization

Merrick Bank's Credit Card Dilemma

The acquisition of existing credit card brands and the expansion of their own credit card options brought to light the significant experience differences between each card type and the massive amount of work it created to manage these separate experiences.

My team was brought in to meet with Merrick's stakeholders on site to establish a project roadmap along with a general consensus on the structure of the information architecture and hierarchical top-level content and features as well as establishing brand and component standards that would guide the design system in the creation of a unified system across their child brands.

The outcome of the initial workshop was a strong plan essential to gathering the information and workshopping all the necessary topics in a day and a half long workshop. Before we could start workshopping anything, we needed to understand the variations of capabilities and features across all the environments to ensure that we did not omit any essential functionalities from the final integrated product. Furthermore, the new experience would not be launched for all brands simultaneously, so an interstitial state of the platform would need to be accounted for.

Information Architecture and Journey Maps

Utilizing a single login point for all of their credit card options, but maintaining separate experiences for the first phase required mapping a new account creation and login journey. While it was highly unlikely that a customer would have more than one of their cards, this was still an edge case that we needed to account for. The solution that we aligned on was that for most users, they would be taken directly to their card's dashboard upon login. For those with multiple cards, they would encounter an interstitial page where they would select which card to access.

Wireframes

A design system was created for wireframe creation. This proved to not only be essential to ensure that all designers were utilizing the same styles, but was a tremendous time saver to have these core components prepared prior to project start.

Dashboard

The key to this experience was to create a dashboard that would be useful and impactful to users in both desktop and mobile environments. We explored a wide range of variations that ensured a proper hierarchy and flexibility for the UI designers to create the polished versions.

The Final Artwork

Once the wireframes were approved, the work shifted to the UI team to build out the high-fidelity mockups. The final artwork included each card's unique branding, yet all tied back to the overall design system to create a unique but aligned look for all experiences.

Summary

Strong end-to-end collaboration between my team and Merrick's team lead to a successful outcome for the first phase of the Brand Harmonization project and a clear road map for the next phase.

Thank you for taking the time to review this case study. I would be happy to review this and additional work in more detail. 

John Begley