Discover Mobile
Experience Design Director and Information Architect on Discover Card’s cross-platform native app.
Problem
Discover Financial Services had relied on a sluggish, native-wrapped mobile website to serve its cardmembers’ needs across mobile platforms. Rising customer expectations demanded better performance and functionality that actually met their needs — and the reviews showed it.
Insight
Cardmembers weren’t asking for more features — they were asking for the basics to feel fast and trustworthy on their own device. The 2★ reviews were a roadmap, not a complaint. After I’d planned a nationwide on-device study and walked every screen in the content inventory, the brief wasn’t “improve the app” — it was “rebuild from the cardmember’s vocabulary up.”
Solution
A ground-up redesign and native rebuild for iPhone, iPad, Android handsets, and Android tablets. Strongly rooted in customer needs and lovingly optimized for each device — the redesign raised the bar in the financial services industry and delighted Discover’s cardmembers.
Preliminary research
Customer reviews. A year’s worth of daily customer feedback told us where to start fixing (and what to leave alone).
Baseline usability testing. A nationwide study with real cardmembers using the in-market app on their own devices. The findings report prioritized improvements by impact vs. effort.
Competitive audit. Best practices, emerging trends, conventions our users would expect, and common slip-ups we’d be glad we avoided.
Content inventory. Every process, screen, and piece of copy in the existing app — the bedrock for both narrow updates and global improvements.
Information architecture & interaction design
Content was organized to match users’ mental models — informed by card-sorting exercises with Discover cardmembers — and prioritized based on the key tasks identified in usability testing.
Page-level content inventory and information hierarchy were determined via team sketch sessions and formal wireframes. Annotated wireframes documented each view’s content and intended interactions between user and backend services.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration
Experience & Visual Design teams collaborated closely to advocate for our users at every juncture, carry research learnings across every screen, and ensure delivery on our shared strategic goals.
Detailed functional requirements and annotations ensured the developed product matched our users’ high expectations. Evaluative usability testing on the live product as it was developed drove iterative changes and further user acceptance.
Pull-quote from the client work
Brendan led our team and our clients to deliver human-focused solutions that were highly effective for users and also achieved business goals for existing and new products. His solutions reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction scores, developed award-winning experiences and delighted users — and our clients. Samantha Joyce, previously Senior Account Manager at FCB Chicago
What came next
Discover Card’s success led to FCB winning Discover Bank, Discover Student Loans, and Discover Network — all of which I led UX and IA for, before becoming Director of User Experience.