This image shows the Prudential homepage.

Bringing a Major Corporation Up-To-Speed

Company: Prudential

Problem

In 2013 Prudential needed to bring their digital products up to a modern standard. We also realized the lack of support for a minority of digital users. Users that use assistive technology and users that have other impairments.

Solution

Prudential developed it's own fork of Twitter Bootstrap. Included in this fork was a full library of patterns that passed WCAG testing with a AA level.

How We Got There

2012: The Beginning

At the time, Prudential Retirement was leading Prudential Financial in digital engagements. The retirement team was the first to build a UX department, which is where I was hired. Retirement's UX team started the process of creating digital standards to eventually be packed into a turn-key solution for the rest of the Prudential family.

It was at this time the corporate UX team was born and corporate took over the roll-out of company-wide web development standards.

Corporate & Retirement Team Up

I acted as a liaison between corporate and retirement, as most of the new standards were being implemented into the latest Retirement marketing sites. Corporate was redesigning one site, retirement was redesigning hundreds of sites.

Data Collection

We collected as much user data to find the most problematic portions of our sites. We found certain parts of our sites that sent users in loops, put users in dead-ends, and were just not accessible for some users with impairments. At the same time, the UX team was working with our developers to find the best framework to build this on. After some deliberation, and accessibility training, Twitter bootstrap was chosen and work started on the Prudential fork. At the first milestone we started user testing and fine tuning our fork based on the data collected.

This image shows a sitemap strategy session.

Site-map and Content Strategy.

This image shows a user testing session.

User Testing Session.

Final Touches

As the web development standard was coming into fruition, we started hiring more UX strategists. The implementation of Twitter bootstrap meant less time developing and QAing sites. Prudential could now focus more time on content strategy and user focused designs. During this year long process, I organically fell into the roll of accessibility expert. It ended up being something I was naturally passionate about.

So passionate, that Prudential sent me to accessibility conferences to present how we brought a major corporation up to present day web standards, while retaining a WCAG AA Level. In a little over a year.

The core of my involvement.

Processes

  • Agile workflow implementation
  • Scrum
  • User Research
  • A/B Testing
  • User Testing
  • User Stories
  • Prototyping
  • Accessibility Training for Developers & Designers
  • Accessibility Testing

Tools

  • Axure (Wireframes)
  • Axure (Prototyping)
  • Adobe CC
  • User Testing Firm
  • Google Analytics
  • Github
  • JAWS