Redesigning a Critical Support Tool to Improve Resolution Time by 40%
YNAB helps users stay on top of their money by automatically pulling in bank transactions through services like Plaid. However, when there were problems, our support reps were stuck using a clunky diagnostic tool (the User Status Report, aka the "USR").
The problem? Our tool was misleading and hard to use for customer support, forcing them to make educated guesses about sensitive financial data.
Company
YNAB
Industry
Fintech
Year
2024 – 2025
Timeline
6 Months
Role
Lead Product Designer
My Role
I was the lead and only designer on the team. I also crafted and managed the roadmap, engineering requirements, and project planning.
My Team
1 Part-time PM
1 Full Stack Engineer Designers
1 QA
2 Customer Support Reps
The Challenge
The existing USR was actively working against our team, required extensive training to feel confident in, and was actively misleading.
Information was often deceptive, wrong, or mislabeled.
Finding the correct data required enormous trial and error, tapping into extensive internal documentation, or general, undocumented tribal knowledge.
New team members faced a mountain-sized learning curve.
However, our existing users had half a decade of learned muscle memory that we didn't want to disrupt too much.
The original tool has been created ad-hoc over 8 years
The Solution
Working with our team, we redeveloped core parts of the USR platform based on a user-centered approach to meet our customer support team's needs.
We also added visual polish to bring the USR in order to bring it out of the early 2010s and into the modern day.
The Impact
30%-40%
Reduction in time to solve related support tickets
95%
Of surveyed support reps said the new version was significantly better than the old version
60%
Of internal documentation was eliminated
"It feels like such a luxe, design-forward tool that's still so useful."
– Ashley G
"I think the new USR is a huge improvement — thank you!!"
– Kelly M
"Thanks for giving us a really usable, well-designed, flexible, and detailed tool!!! "
– Julie K
"Overall it was a very smooth transition for me, which I think speaks to the quality of the tool!"
– Lauren SC
"The new USR is a work of art."
– Matthew AB
"Honestly, the new UST was so intuitive. It took almost no time at all to adjust."
– Sofia
How We Got There
A core challenge: how can we make a better tool without breaking (too much) muscle memory?
After auditing the current experience and leading several workshops, I explored everything from simple UI adjustments to complete overhauls. Ultimately, we decided on a comprehensive rebuild to address technical debt and reshape the experience based on genuine support workflows, while retaining key layout elements to help users adapt.
We decided to ship a rough alpha before completing everything so we could learn and iterate as quickly as possible.
We knew we'd never understand every workflow and need in a vacuum so our early beta was our attempt to pressure test our assumptions and learn quickly. I set up a dedicated Slack channel for our testers to provide us with direct feedback on areas that needed improvement and how well our changes were working for their needs.
Our internal beta looked quite different from the designs, but it allowed us to quickly learn what was missing.
Solution
Rather than slapping on a fresh coat of paint, we rebuilt from the ground up. This clean-slate approach freed us from technical limitations while allowing us to reimagine the experience based on actual support workflows. Here's how we transformed the experience:
We designed a single view that gives reps immediate visibility into all of a user's banking connections. No more guesswork or relying on their own memory.
We surfaced recent transaction history so support reps could quickly identify issues without reaching out to our third-party providers.
We restructured the view of historical data so that customer support specialists could quickly understand the history of a customer's account.
Key Learnings
Be as hands on with users as you can
Being a fly on the wall watching customer support reps answer tickets revealed some of our most powerful insights. It also helped us build invaluable trust with the team. It helped set the stage for additional ride-alongs during our alpha and beta, which helped uncover additional areas for improvement.
Ship early, iterate relentlessly
Launching our rough alpha exposed incorrect assumptions immediately and surfaced edge cases we'd never have anticipated. Weekly iterations based on active feedback not only produced a dramatically better product, but built goodwill with our users who saw their input directly shaping their daily tool.
Balance between idealism and pragmatism pays off
We embraced the 80/20 rule, focusing on high-impact areas first. By prioritizing new functionality that solved major pain points while deferring less critical improvements, we delivered significant value within our timeline constraints.
