Secure Messaging

Our Secure Messaging initiative delivers a scalable, secure digital communication platform that enables customers to exchange sensitive messages and documents across multiple Nationwide business units. Built on reusable design patterns and aligned with Digital Messaging and Omnichannel capabilities, the solution follows a "build once, use everywhere" approach to create a consistent, enterprise-wide user experience and the ability to scale beyond!

Client

Nationwide

Year

2025

Role

Sr. UX Designer

Industry

Insurance

As the Lead Product Designer for the Secure Messaging initiative, I partnered with cross-functional Agile teams including product owners, engineering leads, developers, solution architects, and business stakeholders, to define the product vision and drive alignment from discovery through delivery.

I led the design and product strategy, facilitating stakeholder discussions to prioritize business needs, establish a scalable MVP for the pilot launch, and create a foundation that could be extended across multiple lines of business.

Collaborating with UX researchers, content strategists, visual designers, and Design System federators, I ensured the experience was user-centered, accessible, and consistent with enterprise standards.

Below are the key milestones and learnings from this journey.

Top Highlights

  • Defined the UX product vision for Nationwide's Secure Messaging Portal, transforming fragmented communication experiences into a scalable platform supporting secure conversations and document exchange.

    Methods used

    Discovery Workshops, User Interviews, Competitive Analysis, Journey Mapping

  • Led research synthesis and stakeholder alignment to identify communication pain points and improve secure messaging workflows for customers and associates.

    Methods used

    Stakeholder Presentations, Gap Analysis, Product Strategy, Cross-functional Collaboration.

  • Presented design strategy and research insights to senior leadership, influencing roadmap priorities and long-term product direction.

    Methods used

    Stakeholder Alignment sessions, User Interviews (Moderated), Research & Data Analysis, Roadmap Creation, Business Growth.

  • Designed end-to-end user experiences, interactive prototypes, and detailed design specifications that accelerated engineering handoff and MVP delivery.

    Methods used

    Concept Testing, Prototype Testing, Design Iterations, Dev walkthrough, Feedback & Iterations.

The Context

Nationwide did not have a standardized, enterprise-wide capability for secure digital conversations and the exchange of sensitive documents.

Multiple business areas (including IRM, OCCO, Retirement Solutions, and others) had independently recognized this need and implemented fragmented, hard-to-scale solutions.

This lack of a reusable, integrated approach prevents consistent cross-channel experiences, slowed adoption, increased support complexity, and creates duplicated development effort as well as impacted busniess heavily with fradulent occurance and identity theft.

A single, secure, enterprise-level solution is required to enable consistent experiences, accelerate adoption, and reduce duplication through a "build once, use many" model.

The Research

  • Research Goal

  • Method used

  • Archetype

  • Overview

Ideation & Strategy

Once we synthesized the research findings, I translated key insights into early design concepts and end-to-end user journeys to validate our product strategy and test assumptions before investing in detailed design or development.

This low-cost, iterative approach helped uncover gaps early, align on priorities, and ensure the solution was built on a scalable foundation.

These concepts also became a strategic communication tool, which I used to align stakeholders around the product vision, spark conversations across business and platform teams, and identify opportunities to create reusable patterns that could scale beyond the initial MVP.

By visualizing the future experience early, I always like to encourage a shared understanding, accelerate decision-making, and lay the groundwork for broader enterprise adoption.

  • Wireframe mindmap

  • First Draft of Associate Flow

  • Journey Mapping

  • Customer Flow

    Customer Flow

  • Future Scalable Concepts

Final Designs

Below are the final High Fidelity Prototypes for the MVP Plan Sponsor and Participant launch that were eventually published in production.