American Airlines Credit Union

Reinventing a financial brand’s website to drive trust, agility & member-centric design

Role: Design Lead, Concept, Brand
Tools: Sketch, Invision, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Year: 2017

The Strategic Challenge

AACU, a cooperative financial institution with over $8.5 billion in assets and a long heritage tied to the airline industry, was operating a website that was outdated, unresponsive and difficult to maintain.

  • Users reported frustration with navigation, poor mobile performance and an overall “out-of-date” feel.

  • Marketing and content teams struggled with high effort to update assets and lacked a consistent design system.

  • The broader business goal: modernize the digital presence, increase user trust and reduce time-to-update, which would support growth, member retention and competitive differentiation.

My Role

As the Design Lead, I was tasked with overseeing the full transformation of the website — from brand refresh and UX strategy to design system implementation and handoff to engineering. I collaborated closely with the marketing, content, UX, and development teams to align business goals, brand identity and measurable UX outcomes.

The Approach

  1. Conducted stakeholder workshops to align around refreshed brand direction, “member-first” mindset and operational agility.

  2. Led a UX audit and user sentiment survey to identify key usability pain-points and quantify baseline experience issues (navigation confusion, mobile failures, content update friction).

  3. Defined and implemented a design system and governance model that included:

    • A new color palette optimized for screens, refreshed typography and imagery to elevate brand perception.

    • Component libraries for marketing pages, product pages and responsive contexts, enabling content authors to work more independently and engineers to reuse assets.

  4. Introduced user-friendly navigation and IA changes: simplified journeys from discovery → product selection → digital member activation.

  5. Partnered with engineering/tech to ensure the new site was fully responsive, maintainable, and scalable — reducing design/update cycle time and integrating with existing backend systems.

Business & UX Impact

Reflection

Increased website conversion rate (digital applications + member sign-ups) by 62 %

  1. Reduced time to publish new content/assets by 78 %, enabling faster marketing response

  2. Improved mobile usability score (post-launch) to 86 / 100 (from a baseline of 10).

  3. Enhanced brand perception with user sentiment rising to 4.5 / 5 (from previous 2.8 / 5)

  4. Established a design system used by both marketing and product teams enabling reuse across future digital channels

  5. Strengthened digital member trust and brand consistency across all touchpoints

This project illustrates my leadership principle that modern UX leadership happens at the intersection of brand, design operations and measurable business outcomes. I didn’t just redesign a website; I built a process and ecosystem that enabled AACU to scale digital experiences with speed, consistency and member-centric intent.

Why this matters in your next role

This case captures my strength in leading cross-functional UX transformation in complex, regulated industries.

For a company seeking a Director of UX, it shows that I:

  • Translate business challenges into measurable design strategies and frameworks.

  • Build systems and processes that empower non-design teams to work smarter and faster.

  • Lead with both empathy and precision — balancing creative direction with operational excellence.

  • Elevate UX from a production function to a strategic driver of brand trust and growth.

It’s a clear reflection of how I help organizations design not only better experiences, but better ways of working.