Product development of My Pages - a self-service portal for debtors
Client: Alektum Group | Role: UX-designer | Duration: 2023-2025
My team and I took on the challenge of transforming Alektum’s long-neglected self-service portal for people in debt. The original portal had not been maintained for years, lacked basic accessibility features, and offered a poor user experience with confusing flows and poorly structured information architecture. As the portal is used by people in debt across multiple countries in Europe, it also needed to be adapted for international use, something the original version had not been prepared for.
Designing for sustainable product development
I knew that the self-service portal had not been maintained for several years, except for minor problems. My opinion was that Alektum had overlooked or not looked at all at what kind of experience they were actually providing users with. I argued that they were missing out on a stronger competitive position for their product in terms of customer relationships, sales, operational efficiency, and the debtor experience. There was a primary function, being able to pay their debt directly. But beyond that, alot was under obvious criticism:
Product challanges:
- Difficult user flow
- Missed service and self-service opportunities
- Lack of accessibility and usability standards
- Limited scalability
Frames – UI screenshots of the old interface
There were several perspectives to explore from the current user journey, interconnected systems and operational rutines. Nothing was well documented, most information was in people's heads. One of the lessons learned were how important it is to get people comfortable of change, there were many people I wanted to get on board. I needed to create a common playing field, where we could design the future of the product together.
I believe in the philosophy of the systems thinking process. That we need to broaden our horizons, understand, and then be able to sit down with design. Otherwise, we miss things along the way. It feels like we are constantly stressing our way to solutions instead of designing for malleability and sustainability.
Figure 1 - The system thinking process
Although a lot of work went into designing a completely new UI with a new look and feel and met all usability and accessibility requirements. However, the work that I am most proud of and something that I find myself good at is designing for a holistic experience. This does not mean that anything in the design process is neglected. But I enjoy working with the whole in mind.
Navigating research constraints
One of the key challenges in this project was that we were not allowed to conduct direct interviews with debtors. After discussions with management and legal, we instead needed to rely on indirect insights. The closest we could get was interviewing case handlers who are in daily contact with debtors.
While this provided valuable perspectives, it also introduced limitations. In some cases, there was a clear bias toward the company’s perspective, which required us to critically evaluate the insights and balance them with other data sources. This made it especially important to stay aware of potential blind spots and continuously question assumptions about user needs.
While working on this product, I worked with:
- Leading research and discovery efforts, observing, interviewing, mapping user journeys, surfacing pain points, and identifying opportunities for improvement.
- Synthesizing insights into user stories and facilitating the prioritization of those stories in upcoming sprints.
- Designing and validating solutions: from complex workflows to smaller interaction patterns.
- Designing UI for both mobile and desktop, ensuring a consistent, accessible experience across devices.
- Collaborating with developers, legal, customer support, and product stakeholders to ensure feasibility and shared understanding.
- Facilitating workshops and retros that shaped not just what we built, but how we worked together.
- Influencing the team’s ways of working by introducing more collaborative design processes and helping define a hybrid agile model tailored to our needs.
Driving the introduction of a design system
Early on, I identified inconsistencies across Alektum Group’s products both in visual design and interaction patterns. This resulted in a less good user experience, slower development, and challenges in ensuring compliance with WCAG accessibility standards.
At the same time, upgrading the frontend from Vue 2 to Vue 3 was a high priority. Our developer lead strongly advocated for a “latest is greatest” approach, creating momentum for technical modernization. I positioned this as a strategic opportunity, not just to update the tech stack, but to align design, development, and business needs into a more cohesive foundation.
I took an active role in driving this alignment. I worked across disciplines to connect perspectives and build momentum for introducing a design system. I facilitated workshops with the marketing team, the key stakeholders responsible for brand ownership, to define a shared visual direction. In parallel, I led discussions with developers and managers to ensure the solution supported both technical scalability and product needs. I also presented the initiative to the entire IT department to create broader understanding and buy-in.
By bridging business, technology, and user experience, I helped move the organization toward a shared vision — establishing a design system that improved consistency, increased development efficiency, and created a scalable, accessible foundation for future products.
From design system workshop - Working with colors
From design system workshop - Testing color combinations
For a deeper dive into this work, see the
Designing the new My Pages experience
Early on, I identified inconsistencies across Alektum Group’s products both in visual design and interaction patterns. This resulted in a less good user experience, slower development, and challenges in ensuring compliance with WCAG accessibility standards.
At the same time, upgrading the frontend from Vue 2 to Vue 3 was a high priority. Our developer lead strongly advocated for a “latest is greatest” approach, creating momentum for technical modernization. I positioned this as a strategic opportunity, not just to update the tech stack, but to align design, development, and business needs into a more cohesive foundation.
I took an active role in driving this alignment. I worked across disciplines to connect perspectives and build momentum for introducing a design system. I facilitated workshops with the marketing team, the key stakeholders responsible for brand ownership, to define a shared visual direction. In parallel, I led discussions with developers and managers to ensure the solution supported both technical scalability and product needs. I also presented the initiative to the entire IT department to create broader understanding and buy-in.
By bridging business, technology, and user experience, I helped move the organization toward a shared vision — establishing a design system that improved consistency, increased development efficiency, and created a scalable, accessible foundation for future products.
- Redesigned the layout using components and structure from our new design system making everything accessable
- Restructured top-down information to highlight the most vital content.
- Streamlined the content to focus on key information.
- Introduced familiar status indicators to improve users’ intuitive understanding of their next actions.
New statuses
New - Closed cases
Old - Landing page
New - Landing page
Old - Case details
New - Invoice and attachments
Scrolling ↓
New - Case details
- Instead of a drop down, user is navigated to a new page where all case details are shown.
- Scalable design opens up for features enhancing the experience by enabling adding relevant features based on users needs
- Case description is shown in tables making more difficult information understandable.
Payment plans
Old - Create payment plan
Scrolling ↓
New - Payment plan overview
Scrolling ↓
New - Create payment plan
- Updated the current design and user flow for creating a payment plan
- Designing for an experience of control. So that the debtor understands their actions
- Nudge towards paying
Help center
Scrolling ↓
New feature - Help center
Help center - Answer to a FAQ
- Designed and added an entire new Helpcenter feature, designed to help the debtors find the answers they were looking for
- Tailored questions and answers to each country we operated in
Designing the future payment plan journey
As a Service design strategic initiative at Alektum Group, I developed a comprehensive Service blueprint to visualize and improve the full debtor journey across digital and human touchpoints.
The project aimed to clarify and streamline the service delivery for two distinct user paths: debtors contacting handlers via phone and those interacting through the self-service portal (MyPages). By mapping these flows side-by-side, I was able to expose inconsistencies in the experience and highlight systemic breakdowns, especially in high-friction areas such as interrupted payment plans.
Research & Discovery:
To ground the blueprint in real operations, I conducted field research including shadowing case managers, call monitoring, and stakeholder interviews. One critical insight emerged around the “Afterlife” of payment plans, when debtors default but don’t restart or complete the process. By mapping this with underlying backstage processes (like the call list used by handlers), we were able to visualize hidden complexity and design better interventions.
Co-Creation & Alignment
To activate the blueprint, I co-facilitated a full-day workshop with stakeholders from product, IT, and operations. The blueprint served as a:
- Shared artifact for cross-team understanding.
- Conversation starter to surface blind spots and ownership gaps.
- Foundation for ideation, where teams generated role-specific ideas to improve the service.
Rather than focusing only on UX/UI, I ensured the group considered backstage systems, organizational silos, and communication flows.
Outcomes:
✅ Organizational Alignment: Brought together siloed teams under a shared service vision.✅ Strategic Roadmap: Helped prioritize UX and operational improvements.✅ Cultural Shift: Introduced service design thinking into ongoing product development.✅ Improved Resilience: Highlighted where service breaks down when plans are interrupted, a key area of debtor default.
This blueprint not only became a tool for prioritization and planning, but also a cultural shift toward more holistic, user-centered service thinking within the organization.
Research approach
To ground the work in real-world behavior, I conducted extensive field research. Due to integrity and legal constraints, I was not able to interview debtors directly. Instead, I worked closely with case handlers and their managers, who interact with debtors on a daily basis.
I observed how case handlers managed payment plans and handled their “afterlife”, including follow-ups, interruptions, and cancellations to understand routines, decision-making, and underlying reasoning. In parallel, I conducted interviews with both case handlers and managers to capture their perspectives, operational logic, and key metrics.
To complement this, I facilitated a series of co-creative workshops where we collaboratively mapped the user journey and created service blueprints. This was a highly iterative process, involving multiple sessions, continuous dialogue, and refinement over time.
Full-scale Service blueprint
This version of the service blueprint was used during the workshop, however it is not the most up-to-date. It reflects our thinking at that time and is subject to ongoing iteration.
Challenges & learnings
To ground the blueprint in real operations, I conducted field research including observing, interviewing and cooperative workshops. One critical insight emerged around the “Afterlife” of payment plans, when debtors default but don’t restart or complete the process. By mapping this with underlying backstage processes (like the call list used by handlers), we were able to visualize hidden complexity and design better interventions.
- Maintained direct communication with Aktiv Delgivning, gathering additional insights into business needs.
- Identified key pain points across user groups, such as:
- Clients: Lack of visibility into their cases and inefficient communication.
- Administrators: Outdated product features and internal processes causing delays.
- Service men: Inadequate tools for managing deliveries in the field.
Key insights
Through research, several patterns emerged that highlighted gaps in both the user experience and operational processes.
1. The experience pushes users toward support instead of self-service
- Information is currently prioritized to drive users to contact Operations rather than helping them resolve issues independently
- Debtors lack clear guidance and incentives to take action early, leading to missed first payments
2. Lack of transparency creates uncertainty and inaction
- There is little to no information about the consequences of not taking action
- No confirmation is sent when a payment plan is completed or terminated
- Debtors cannot easily request confirmations or documentation
3. Communication is slow, manual, and outdated
- Physical letters are still a primary channel, causing delays (e.g. several days, no weekend handling)
- Reminders require manual assessment, leading to inefficiencies and missed payments
- Follow-ups for broken payment plans are handled inconsistently and can sometimes increase the debtor’s burden rather than help resolve it
4. High operational complexity impacts both UX and development
- Payment plans are heavily influenced by client-specific requirements, which vary across creditors and countries
- There is no unified system to handle these variations, leading to increased code complexity
- The user experience differs depending on the underlying client agreement and case status
5. Lack of automation creates unnecessary friction
- There is no automatic termination of inactive payment plans
- Many processes rely on manual handling, increasing workload and reducing consistency
Co-Creation & Alignment
To bring the service blueprint to life, I co-facilitated a full-day workshop with key stakeholders from Product, IT, and Operations. The blueprint acted as more than just a visual map, it became a shared reference point that aligned teams around the current state of the service.
It sparked valuable conversations, helping us uncover blind spots, clarify responsibilities, and bridge gaps in ownership. Most importantly, it laid the groundwork for ideation: participants worked in role-based groups to generate actionable ideas for improving the service from their specific perspectives.
The blueprint served as a:
- Shared artifact for cross-team understanding.
- Conversation starter to surface blind spots and ownership gaps.
- Foundation for ideation, Highlighted where service breaks down when plans are interrupted, a key area of debtor default.
The following chapter captures moments from the workshop and illustrates how the blueprint shaped our shared understanding and collaboration moving forward.
Annotations used to point out different noticeable insights
One line in Service blueprint could for example have the following information:
I mapped out different cost calculations during different steps of the journey to show different potential improvments.
Improving debtor-handler communication in a secure self-service portal
Problem statement
The My Pages portal lacked a secure and effective way for debtors to communicate with handlers. The open-ended form offered no guidance, resulting in messages that were often vague or incomplete. This led to critical information gaps, forced follow-ups via unsecured email, and made proper identity validation difficult, introducing serious GDPR risks. The unclear flow not only hindered resolution times but also missed opportunities to engage users meaningfully at a sensitive point in their journey.
Old communication modal
Mapping the problem to design the solution
To drive meaningful change, I first visualized the full communication flow as it existed. This chart exposed inefficiencies and compliance risks, aligning the team around a shared understanding of what needed fixing — and why.
Envisioning a better communication flow
This future-state flow illustrates a streamlined, secure, and structured communication process. Designed to reduce back-and-forth, minimize compliance risks, and empower users, it laid the groundwork for aligning cross-functional teams around a shared goal.
Process
To address these issues, I initiated and led a UX investigation focusing on:
- Business problem mapping: I identified pain points through internal analysis and discussions with stakeholders. Such as, Handlers from the operational staff and IT.
- Cross-functional collaboration: I worked closely with handlers in the operations team to understand real-world communication challenges.
- Technical scoping: I prepared and facilitated workshops with backend and frontend developers to assess feasibility, complexity, and potential solutions.
- User journey redesign: I mapped the current and envisioned future communication flows to support secure, structured, and complete interactions within the portal.
High-fidelity sketches
I proposed new communication features in My Pages such as:
Structured information forms
Replaces the free-text box with structured input fields to help debtors provide all necessary information upfront.
Streamlined communication messages
Offers handlers the ability to request specific information or documents directly through the portal, streamlining the process.
Maintaining security
Keeps all communication within the authenticated portal, minimizing GDPR risks and improving case traceability.
Guiding users to the right type of support
This step helps users identify their need by selecting from a list of predefined options, ensuring their request is directed through the most relevant flow.
Evolving ways of working
During my time at Alektum Group, the product organization went through significant changes. Initially, development was largely project-based and followed a more waterfall-oriented approach. This meant working in isolated initiatives, with limited visibility into the product as a whole or how it evolved over time.
Coming from an agile background, I found it challenging to adapt to this way of working. Even after transitioning toward a product-driven organization, there was still a lack of shared practices and experience in how to effectively work in a more modern, iterative way.
Recognizing this gap, I took initiative together with another designer to help shape a better approach. We introduced agile principles and worked actively to create alignment across roles and teams.
To support this, I initiated and co-facilitated a series of agile workshops, bringing together developers, designers, product owners, and operations. During these sessions, we presented and explored different ways of working — including Kanban, Scrum, and Shape Up. The teams were then encouraged to collaboratively shape their own approach by combining elements from each method.
We recognized that different teams had different needs, and rather than enforcing a single framework, we focused on creating a flexible structure that teams could adapt and take ownership of.
Impact
- Increased cross-team visibility into what we’re working on and why
- Faster iteration cycles, with less time lost in handoffs or waiting
- Better balance between planned work and unexpected changes
- A process that feels owned by the team, not imposed on them
The workshop process
Impact
- Increased cross-team visibility into what we’re working on and why
- Faster iteration cycles, with less time lost in handoffs or waiting
- Better balance between planned work and unexpected changes
- A process that feels owned by the team, not imposed on them
Kanban - enabling a flexible design flow
Kanban is a visual workflow method used to manage tasks and track progress continuously. We used it to support an iterative design process, allowing us to stay flexible, reprioritize quickly, and refine solutions as new insights emerged.
Scrum - providing structure and alignment
Scrum is a structured framework for planning and delivering work in cycles. We used it to create alignment with the broader team, ensuring regular planning, feedback, and a shared direction throughout the project.
Coordinating a Scalable International Rollout
Led the international rollout of our self-service portal, coordinating country-specific adaptations across all Alektum markets. I worked closely with assigned testers in each country to ensure the portal met local needs, managing translations, ensuring regulatory compliance, and adapting to differences in user behavior, such as customizing login methods to regional preferences and technical requirements.
To support this process, I created a detailed test document tailored to each market. It included step-by-step instructions and checkpoints aligned with local variations. A snippet of this document is shown below.
Led the international rollout of our self-service portal, coordinating country-specific adaptations across all Alektum markets. I worked closely with assigned testers in each country to ensure the portal met local needs—managing translations, ensuring regulatory compliance, and adapting to differences in user behavior, such as customizing login methods to regional preferences and technical requirements.
To support this process, I created a detailed test document tailored to each market. It included step-by-step instructions and checkpoints aligned with local variations.
Want to know more?
Product development of My Pages - a self-service portal for debtors
Client: Alektum Group | Role: UX-designer | Duration: 2023-2025
My team and I took on the challenge of transforming Alektum’s long-neglected self-service portal for people in debt. The original portal had not been maintained for years, lacked basic accessibility features, and offered a poor user experience with confusing flows and poorly structured information architecture. As the portal is used by people in debt across multiple countries in Europe, it also needed to be adapted for international use, something the original version had not been prepared for.
Designing for sustainable product development
I knew that the self-service portal had not been maintained for several years, except for minor problems. My opinion was that Alektum had overlooked or not looked at all at what kind of experience they were actually providing users with. I argued that they were missing out on a stronger competitive position for their product in terms of customer relationships, sales, operational efficiency, and the debtor experience. There was a primary function, being able to pay their debt directly. But beyond that, alot was under obvious criticism:
Product challanges:
- Difficult user flow
- Missed service and self-service opportunities
- Lack of accessibility and usability standards
- Limited scalability
Frames – UI screenshots of the old interface
There were several perspectives to explore from the current user journey, interconnected systems and operational rutines. Nothing was well documented, most information was in people's heads. One of the lessons learned were how important it is to get people comfortable of change, there were many people I wanted to get on board. I needed to create a common playing field, where we could design the future of the product together.
I believe in the philosophy of the systems thinking process. That we need to broaden our horizons, understand, and then be able to sit down with design. Otherwise, we miss things along the way. It feels like we are constantly stressing our way to solutions instead of designing for malleability and sustainability.
Figure 1 - The system thinking process
Although a lot of work went into designing a completely new UI with a new look and feel and met all usability and accessibility requirements. However, the work that I am most proud of and something that I find myself good at is designing for a holistic experience. This does not mean that anything in the design process is neglected. But I enjoy working with the whole in mind.
Navigating research constraints
One of the key challenges in this project was that we were not allowed to conduct direct interviews with debtors. After discussions with management and legal, we instead needed to rely on indirect insights. The closest we could get was interviewing case handlers who are in daily contact with debtors.
While this provided valuable perspectives, it also introduced limitations. In some cases, there was a clear bias toward the company’s perspective, which required us to critically evaluate the insights and balance them with other data sources. This made it especially important to stay aware of potential blind spots and continuously question assumptions about user needs.
While working on this product, I worked with:
- Leading research and discovery efforts, observing, interviewing, mapping user journeys, surfacing pain points, and identifying opportunities for improvement.
- Synthesizing insights into user stories and facilitating the prioritization of those stories in upcoming sprints.
- Designing and validating solutions: from complex workflows to smaller interaction patterns.
- Designing UI for both mobile and desktop, ensuring a consistent, accessible experience across devices.
- Collaborating with developers, legal, customer support, and product stakeholders to ensure feasibility and shared understanding.
- Facilitating workshops and retros that shaped not just what we built, but how we worked together.
- Influencing the team’s ways of working by introducing more collaborative design processes and helping define a hybrid agile model tailored to our needs.
Driving the introduction of a design system
Early on, I identified inconsistencies across Alektum Group’s products both in visual design and interaction patterns. This resulted in a less good user experience, slower development, and challenges in ensuring compliance with WCAG accessibility standards.
I took an active role in driving this alignment. I worked across disciplines to connect perspectives and build momentum for introducing a design system. I facilitated workshops with the marketing team, the key stakeholders responsible for brand ownership, to define a shared visual direction. In parallel, I led discussions with developers and managers to ensure the solution supported both technical scalability and product needs. I also presented and educated the entire IT department about a design system to create broader understanding and buy-in.
At the same time, upgrading the frontend from Vue 2 to Vue 3 was a high priority. Our developer lead strongly advocated for a “latest is greatest” approach, creating momentum for technical modernization. I positioned this as a strategic opportunity, not just to update the tech stack, but to align design, development, and business needs into a more cohesive foundation.
By bridging business, technology, and user experience, I helped move the organization toward a shared vision, establishing a design system that improved consistency, increased development efficiency, and created a scalable, accessible foundation for future products.
From design system workshop - Testing color combinations
From design system workshop - Working with colors
For a deeper dive into this work, see the
Designing the new My Pages experience
Designing the new state of My Pages was a large iterative process focused on simplifying complexity and creating a scalable experience across markets.
To expand our perspective, we conducted an extensive external analysis, drawing inspiration from established digital products such as Blocket, Airbnb, and Klarna. Rather than copying patterns, we explored and adapted interaction models and ways of structuring information that could fit our specific context.
Throughout the process, we conducted evaluative testing with case handlers and managers across multiple European markets. This helped us identify common needs and behaviors, allowing us to design for a broader audience rather than creating fragmented, market-specific solutions.
Landing page
Old - Landing page
New - Landing page
New - Closed cases
New statuses
- Redesigned the layout using components and structure from our new design system making everything accessible.
- Streamlined the content to focus on key information.
- Restructured top-down information to highlight the most vital content.
- Introduced familiar status indicators to improve users’ intuitive understanding of their next actions.
Case overview
Old - Case details
Scrolling ↓
New - Case details
New - Invoice and attachments
- Instead of a drop down, user is navigated to a new page where all case details are shown.
- Scalable design opens up for features enhancing the experience by enabling adding relevant features based on users needs
- Case description is shown in tables making more difficult information understandable.
Payment plans
Old - Create payment plan
Scrolling ↓
New - Create payment plan
Scrolling ↓
New - Payment plan overview
- Updated the current design and user flow for creating a payment plan
- Designing for an experience of control. So that the debtor understands their actions
- Nudge towards paying
Help center
Scrolling ↓
New feature - Help center
Help center - Answer to a FAQ
- Designed and added an entire new Helpcenter feature, designed to help the debtors find the answers they were looking for
- Tailored questions and answers to each country we operated in
Designing the future payment plan journey
As part of shaping the future state of My Pages, I was tasked with exploring and designing key parts of the user journey from a more holistic and forward-looking perspective.
I began with the payment plan journey, one of the most critical and complex flows. This included the entire experience, from the moment a user receives a letter (physically or via a digital mailbox like Kivra), through setting up and managing a payment plan, to either completing it or discontinuing it.
Research approach
To ground the work in real-world behavior, I conducted extensive field research. Due to integrity and legal constraints, I was not able to interview debtors directly. Instead, I worked closely with case handlers and their managers, who interact with debtors on a daily basis.
I observed how case handlers managed payment plans and handled their “afterlife”, including follow-ups, interruptions, and cancellations to understand routines, decision-making, and underlying reasoning. In parallel, I conducted interviews with both case handlers and managers to capture their perspectives, operational logic, and key metrics.
To complement this, I facilitated a series of co-creative workshops where we collaboratively mapped the user journey and created service blueprints. This was a highly iterative process, involving multiple sessions, continuous dialogue, and refinement over time.
Full-scale Service blueprint
This version of the service blueprint was used during the workshop, however it is not the most up-to-date. It reflects our thinking at that time and is subject to ongoing iteration.
Challenges & learnings
One of the key challenges during this phase was navigating organizational sensitivity. The level of exploration sometimes surfaced inefficiencies in existing routines, which could be difficult for stakeholders to engage with.
To address this, I focused on building trust and framing insights as opportunities for improvement rather than criticism. This helped create a more constructive dialogue and ensured that the work could move forward with stronger alignment.
Key insights
Through research, several patterns emerged that highlighted gaps in both the user experience and operational processes.
1. The experience pushes users toward support instead of self-service
- Information is currently prioritized to drive users to contact Operations rather than helping them resolve issues independently
- Debtors lack clear guidance and incentives to take action early, leading to missed first payments
2. Lack of transparency creates uncertainty and inaction
- There is little to no information about the consequences of not taking action
- No confirmation is sent when a payment plan is completed or terminated
- Debtors cannot easily request confirmations or documentation
3. Communication is slow, manual, and outdated
- Physical letters are still a primary channel, causing delays (e.g. several days, no weekend handling)
- Reminders require manual assessment, leading to inefficiencies and missed payments
- Follow-ups for broken payment plans are handled inconsistently and can sometimes increase the debtor’s burden rather than help resolve it
4. High operational complexity impacts both UX and development
- Payment plans are heavily influenced by client-specific requirements, which vary across creditors and countries
- There is no unified system to handle these variations, leading to increased code complexity
- The user experience differs depending on the underlying client agreement and case status
5. Lack of automation creates unnecessary friction
- There is no automatic termination of inactive payment plans
- Many processes rely on manual handling, increasing workload and reducing consistency
Co-Creation & Alignment
To bring the service blueprint to life, I co-facilitated a full-day workshop with key stakeholders from Product, IT, and Operations. The blueprint acted as more than just a visual map, it became a shared reference point that aligned teams around the current state of the service.
It sparked valuable conversations, helping us uncover blind spots, clarify responsibilities, and bridge gaps in ownership. Most importantly, it laid the groundwork for ideation: participants worked in role-based groups to generate actionable ideas for improving the service from their specific perspectives.
The blueprint served as a:
- Shared artifact for cross-team understanding.
- Conversation starter to surface blind spots and ownership gaps.
- Foundation for ideation, Highlighted where service breaks down when plans are interrupted, a key area of debtor default.
The following chapter captures moments from the workshop and illustrates how the blueprint shaped our shared understanding and collaboration moving forward.
Annotations used to point out different noticeable insights
One line in Service blueprint could for example have the following information:
I mapped out different cost calculations during different steps of the journey to show potential effect of improvement.
Improving debtor-handler communication in a secure self-service portal
Problem statement
The My Pages portal lacked a secure and effective way for debtors to communicate with handlers. The open-ended form offered no guidance, resulting in messages that were often vague or incomplete. This led to critical information gaps, forced follow-ups via unsecured email, and made proper identity validation difficult, introducing serious GDPR risks. The unclear flow not only hindered resolution times but also missed opportunities to engage users meaningfully at a sensitive point in their journey.
Old communication modal
Process
To address these issues, I initiated and led a UX investigation focusing on:
- Business problem mapping: I identified pain points through internal analysis and discussions with stakeholders. Such as, Handlers from the operational staff and IT.
- Cross-functional collaboration: I worked closely with handlers in the operations team to understand real-world communication challenges.
- Technical scoping: I prepared and facilitated workshops with backend and frontend developers to assess feasibility, complexity, and potential solutions.
- User journey redesign: I mapped the current and envisioned future communication flows to support secure, structured, and complete interactions within the portal.
Mapping the problem to design the solution
To drive meaningful change, I first visualized the full communication flow as it existed. This chart exposed inefficiencies and compliance risks, aligning the team around a shared understanding of what needed fixing — and why.
Envisioning a better communication flow
This future-state flow illustrates a streamlined, secure, and structured communication process. Designed to reduce back-and-forth, minimize compliance risks, and empower users, it laid the groundwork for aligning cross-functional teams around a shared goal.
High-fidelity sketches
I proposed new communication features in My Pages such as:
Structured information forms
Replaces the free-text box with structured input fields to help debtors provide all necessary information upfront.
Streamlined communication messages
Offers handlers the ability to request specific information or documents directly through the portal, streamlining the process.
Maintaining security
Keeps all communication within the authenticated portal, minimizing GDPR risks and improving case traceability.
Guiding users to the right type of support
This step helps users identify their need by selecting from a list of predefined options, ensuring their request is directed through the most relevant flow.
Evolving ways of working
During my time at Alektum Group, the product organization went through significant changes. Initially, development was largely project-based and followed a more waterfall-oriented approach. This meant working in isolated initiatives, with limited visibility into the product as a whole or how it evolved over time.
Coming from an agile background, I found it challenging to adapt to this way of working. Even after transitioning toward a product-driven organization, there was still a lack of shared practices and experience in how to effectively work in a more modern, iterative way.
Recognizing this gap, I took initiative together with another designer to help shape a better approach. We introduced agile principles and worked actively to create alignment across roles and teams.
To support this, I initiated and co-facilitated a series of agile workshops, bringing together developers, designers, product owners, and operations. During these sessions, we presented and explored different ways of working, including Kanban, Scrum, and Shape Up. The teams were then encouraged to collaboratively shape their own approach by combining elements from each method.
We recognized that different teams had different needs, and rather than enforcing a single framework, we focused on creating a flexible structure that teams could adapt and take ownership of.
The workshop process
Impact
- Increased cross-team visibility into what we’re working on and why
- Faster iteration cycles, with less time lost in handoffs or waiting
- Better balance between planned work and unexpected changes
- A process that feels owned by the team, not imposed on them
Kanban - enabling a flexible design flow
Kanban is a visual workflow method used to manage tasks and track progress continuously. We used it to support an iterative design process, allowing us to stay flexible, reprioritize quickly, and refine solutions as new insights emerged.
Scrum - providing structure and alignment
Scrum is a structured framework for planning and delivering work in cycles. We used it to create alignment with the broader team, ensuring regular planning, feedback, and a shared direction throughout the project.
Coordinating a Scalable International Rollout
Led the international rollout of our self-service portal, coordinating country-specific adaptations across all Alektum markets. I worked closely with assigned testers in each country to ensure the portal met local needs, managing translations, ensuring regulatory compliance, and adapting to differences in user behavior, such as customizing login methods to regional preferences and technical requirements.
To support this process, I created a detailed test document tailored to each market. It included step-by-step instructions and checkpoints aligned with local variations. A snippet of this document is shown to the right.
Want to know more?
