Case Study — Product Design at Transamerica (WFG)
From Friction to Flow: Redesigning the WFG Agent Portal
The WFG agent portal was unintuitive and impersonal — essential tools were hard to find and nothing adapted to the agent using it. I joined a redesign already in motion, pushed for user research inside a SAFe Agile team, and built a design system tailored to WFG rather than an off-the-shelf component set.
The problem#
The WFG agent portal was unintuitive and inefficient, with essential tools hard to find and no personalization — licensed agents and senior agents saw the same undifferentiated dashboard regardless of what their role actually needed day to day. The result was frustration, reduced productivity, and low engagement with a tool agents were supposed to rely on.
Process#
The project's direction — and the decision to redesign the portal — was set before I joined. Working inside a SAFe Agile team, we identified the opportunity to ground that redesign in actual research rather than carried-over assumptions: user interviews, surveys, and usability testing on wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes, iterated on the feedback they surfaced.
Research
Gathered insights from user interviews, surveys, and usability tests to identify where the existing portal was costing agents time.
Prototyping
Created and tested wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes against the pain points research surfaced.
Iteration
Refined designs based on feedback to improve usability and functionality before the design was finalized.
Customization
Built an ad-hoc, unique design system tailored to WFG's branding and functional requirements to ensure consistency and scalability across the platform.
The redesign leaned on role-based personalization — licensed agents got quick access to sales tools, senior agents got team-metrics oversight — which meant building a custom design system rather than reusing an existing component set, since WFG's branding and functional requirements did not map cleanly onto off-the-shelf patterns.
Targets#
95%
task completion target
Aspirational goal, not a measured outcome
20%
weekly login increase target
Aspirational goal, not a measured outcome
75%
satisfaction rate target
Aspirational goal, not a measured outcome
These figures — along with a target Net Promoter Score of 40+ — were the success metrics defined at the outset, informed by user research, competitive analysis, and usability testing. They were never measured against a shipped result: this case study reports the targets the team set, not verified outcomes, and does not claim the redesign hit them.
Lessons#
Direct user engagement finds what assumptions miss
Pushing for user interviews and usability testing on a redesign whose direction was already set uncovered pain points the original plan had not accounted for.
A tailored design system is a usability decision, not just a branding one
WFG's functional requirements did not map cleanly onto an off-the-shelf component set — customization was what made the role-based personalization possible.
Collaboration on someone else's plan is still real design work
Joining after direction was set does not mean design has nothing to contribute — arguing for research and shaping role-specific features within an existing plan is where this project's value showed up.
FAQ#
Did you set the direction for this redesign?
No. The decision to redesign the portal was made before I joined the team. What I contributed was pushing for user interviews and usability testing so the design was grounded in real agent pain points, plus the design system and personalized, role-based interface built from that research.
Did the redesign hit its targets?
That was never measured and this case study does not claim otherwise. The 95% task-completion, 20% engagement, 75% satisfaction, and NPS 40+ figures were goals set at the outset from research and competitive analysis — aspirational benchmarks, not reported results.
Want the details?
Happy to walk through the research process, the role-based design system, or what collaborating inside a SAFe Agile team looked like.