Redesigning an internal compliance workflow to improve throughput, decision quality, governance, and time-to-market
Timeline: 2025 — 6 months (end-to-end delivery)
Summary
The Customer Due Diligence (CDD) system is an internal product used by compliance teams to review sensitive customer data, run risk checks, and document decisions under strict regulatory requirements. Prior to this work, the workflow relied on fragmented tools and manual tracking, which increased handling time, created inconsistencies, and added unnecessary overhead for audit reviews.
I led UX and UI for an end-to-end redesign that transformed this fragmented operation into a structured, task-based workflow with clear ownership, explicit states, and integrated traceability—delivered within platform constraints and aligned with time-to-market priorities.
Context
CDD is a high-governance, high-volume process. Agents must verify customer information across multiple sources, evaluate risk signals, record rationale, and ensure every step is auditable. The workflow involves multiple roles (agents, reviewers, administrative users) and frequent handoffs. Small UX inefficiencies compound quickly into rework, escalations, and operational risk.
My Role
Lead UX/UI Designer working primarily with Compliance Operations and Business stakeholders, partnering closely with Engineering throughout implementation.
Tools: Figma, Miro, OutSystems
The problem
The challenges were operational and governance-related rather than data availability:
- Case status and ownership were manually tracked and often unclear
- Decision-critical information was distributed across multiple systems, increasing context switching
- Workflow steps were inconsistent, resulting in variable decision quality and higher rework
- Traceability and rationale capture were not integrated into the flow, increasing audit effort
- UI patterns lacked standardization, slowing iteration and limiting scalability to adjacent processes
Goals
- Reduce average handling time per case without compromising compliance quality
- Make ownership, status, and next actions explicit across the case lifecycle
- Standardize inputs and validations aligned to policy rules
- Integrate auditability (who did what, when, and why) into the core workflow
- Establish a reusable UI framework to extend beyond CDD
- Shorten the cycle from intake → decision → completion (time-to-market)
Constraints and approach
The solution needed to improve daily throughput quickly while staying reliable under strict governance requirements and platform constraints. Rather than redesigning in abstraction, the workflow was shaped around real operational cadence, policy rules, and common failure points.
Key product decisions:
- Treat workflow state and role ownership as first-class product concepts
- Surface decision-critical signals in context, where decisions are made
- Add guardrails and validations where operational errors typically occur
- Standardize interaction patterns to accelerate delivery of future workflows
Key improvements (iteration highlights)
1) Task-based workflow with explicit states and ownership
The experience was restructured into a consistent set of tasks with clear progression:
- Case-level status and ownership visible throughout the workflow
- Task states (assigned, in progress, completed) reflected in navigation and available actions
- Role-based actions (claim, release, resume, complete) aligned to operational handoffs
- Reduced ambiguity during multi-step reviews and reassignment scenarios
2) Decision context designed for speed and consistency
The UI prioritized the minimum information required to proceed confidently:
- Consolidated identity and risk signals within the task context
- Structured evidence review with consistent placement of supporting details
- Standardized rationale capture to improve consistency across agents and reviewers
- Reduced back-and-forth and unnecessary navigation across systems
3) Guardrails and validation aligned to policy
Operational safety was handled as a product requirement:
- Required fields and validations derived directly from compliance rules
- State-aware controls to prevent invalid transitions and incomplete submissions
- Clear error states with recovery paths to reduce rework and escalations
4) Standardized patterns to scale beyond CDD
A reusable UI framework was established to support additional compliance processes:
- Consistent layout conventions (navigation, status, primary actions, history)
- Repeatable components for evidence, notes, checkpoints, and audit history
- Patterns designed to be feasible within OutSystems, supporting faster iteration cycles
Approved layout
Final workflow layout and screens designed by me, reviewed and approved with Compliance Operations and Business stakeholders.
Outcomes
Following rollout within a defined operational scope, results indicated:
- Average case handling time reduced by approximately ~30%
- Reduced rework and escalations through clearer tasks and policy-aligned validations
- Improved accountability through explicit ownership and integrated task history
- Faster audit reviews enabled by consistent rationale capture and traceability
- The workflow structure and UI patterns adopted as a baseline for adjacent processes (e.g., KYC updates, AML alerts)
What this demonstrates
- Product-led thinking applied to high-governance enterprise workflows
- Translation of policy and operational rules into scalable interaction design
- End-to-end delivery at scale with implementation feasibility
- Balancing time-to-market with compliance, auditability, and operational safety
- Establishing a reusable framework that accelerates future delivery
Next steps
Refine role configuration and permissioning to support broader organizational structures
Expand coverage to additional compliance workflows using the established framework
Introduce Phase 2 assistance features (auto-fill and recommendations) with controlled review and clear accountability
Improve reporting and operational insights based on workflow data