Project
Jeeves : rebuilding from the ground up
Consistency, scalability, and delight.
Beyond a UI refresh, the Jeeves experience has been redesigned to support our customers as well as our internal teams
6
minute read
Leadership
Product strategy
Design systems
Entreprenuership
Visual design
CLIENT
Jeeves
SERVICES
Platform Design
ROLE
Lead / Director
Project summary
In late 2022 early 2023 Jeeves was faced with what I like to call a crucible moment. As the global economy shifted a low interest lending company that also offered an insanely high cash back credit products was unsustainable. We had to pivot. Part of this pivot was reducing the relevance of existing product lines and introducing new ones.
At the same time our web application, our core product, was built the way most early stage startups are, with an insurmountable foundation of technical debt. A lack of universality in the architecture, what limited architecture there was, and every screen being a stand alone entity created a hostage situation for improvements. What does that mean? Put simply if the design team wanted to change something as seemingly simple as our primary button from having an 8px radius to 12px radius, it would have to be manually done on every single instance of the button, not just a simple CSS update.
After composing an audit of the existing experience, and all the discrepancies, and knowing we had to modify most pages to align with the new direction it became clear we needed drastic measures. After spending a week with the VP of Product and CTO during a fever pitch intense 3 day session I developed a strategy. I put in a 48 hour straight effort and presented a ridiculous statement ... we have to burn the whole thing down.
I presented wireframes and they were met with praise and excitement. Jeeves 2.0 was born.
Here is a look at the audit and the recommended changes.
Exploration
Once the wireframes and basic information architecture were established, it was time to get to work. I went back (having come from the offsite mentioned above) and introduced the concept to my team. After a couple of days of discussion, and some exploration we started moving quickly. One thing I neglected to mention: we had insanely tight timelines. My design systems lead took the brunt of the effort on her shoulders and really delivered.
We wanted to make sure we were building something scalable and intentional. We started with a basic atomic design foundation. It’s important to note this wasn’t exactly an over night decision. Like I said earlier, we inherited a product with a lack of system level design and had been making small improvements when opportunities arose. As we explored new layouts and compositions one thing remained the same - we were stuck in old habits.
For Jeeves 2.0 to be successful, my VP of Product said something so profound “We have to unlearn everything we know about who we are” and introduce ourselves to who we need to become. Here are some examples of the differences between decoration and an entire system reboot.
It’s important to also note that as we were moving at light speed, daily design crits and constant socialization with engineering was paramount. Every pixel was challenged and every pattern was smoke tested.
