Product development of a self-service portal for debtors
Alektum Group, UX-designer, 2023-2025
Background
Two years ago, 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.
Working with a System thinking mindset
From the start, I approached this project with a system thinking mindset. Rather than focusing on individual features, I needed to expand my understanding and map the status quo, I looked at how technology, processes, users, and operations interconnected. To broaden my perspective, I began with research—mapping user journeys, business needs, and operational touchpoints.
The next step was to imagine: envision a long-term vision for the service while fostering an iterative and collaborative culture. I created engaging workshops that inspired co-creation and helped the team see new possibilities. Even before we formally adopted a product development framework for My Pages, I had a clear vision of its potential: empowering users to resolve their issues independently, reducing frustration and lowering the need for call center support.
Figure 1 - The system thinking process
The imagine step transitions into the design phase, reflecting a combination of system thinking and design thinking throughout the process. This involves exploring various user-centered solutions for each potential scenario.
My work included:
- Leading discovery efforts: 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 platforms to ensure a consistent, accessible experience across devices.
- Collaborating deeply 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.
Over time, I also helped influence our team's ways of working, introducing more collaborative design processes and helping define a hybrid agile model tailored to our needs.
Pictures from the workshop
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 following chapter captures moments from the workshop and illustrates how the blueprint shaped our shared understanding and collaboration moving forward.
I used annotations 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
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.
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.
Design in action: UI evolution that drives clarity and confidence
A core strength I bring as a UX designer is the ability to improve interfaces through structured, iterative design — always grounded in real user needs, business goals, and technical realities. This chapter visualizes some of the UI changes I’ve led across different projects, showing how I turn vague problems into clear, purposeful, and accessible interfaces.
My approach to UI evolution
Each of these examples of changes may seem small, but together they create a dramatically improved user experience. What ties them together is how I work:
- I start with the problem, not the UI.
- I co-create with others — developers, users, legal, and support teams.
- I test early with stakeholders and iterate based on feedback.
- I focus on clarity, structure, and confidence for the user at every step.
Old - Landing page
New - Landing page
- 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.
Old - Case details
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.
Old - Create payment plan
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
Designing our way of working: from agile exploration to a hybrid Model
Clear communication and efficient collaboration are just as important within the team as they are in the product. As we scaled our design and development work, it became clear that our existing agile process wasn’t quite working for everyone. Different roles had different needs — and we needed a shared rhythm that supported both focus and flexibility.
To find a better way of working, I initiated and helped facilitate a series of agile workshops that brought together developers, designers, product owners, and operations roles. Our goal: to examine what was working, what wasn’t, and how we might adapt our methodology to better fit the nature of our work and the people doing it.
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
Accecable in
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.
New design
Old design
Want to know more?
Product development of a self-service portal for debtors
Alektum Group, UX-designer, 2023-2025
Background
Two years ago, 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.
Working with a System thinking mindset
From the start, I approached this project with a system thinking mindset. Rather than focusing on individual features, I needed to expand my understanding and map the status quo, I looked at how technology, processes, users, and operations interconnected. To broaden my perspective, I began with research—mapping user journeys, business needs, and operational touchpoints.
The next step was to imagine: envision a long-term vision for the service while fostering an iterative and collaborative culture. I created engaging workshops that inspired co-creation and helped the team see new possibilities. Even before we formally adopted a product development framework for My Pages, I had a clear vision of its potential: empowering users to resolve their issues independently, reducing frustration and lowering the need for call center support.
Figure 1 - The system thinking process
The imagine step transitions into the design phase, reflecting a combination of system thinking and design thinking throughout the process. This involves exploring various user-centered solutions for each potential scenario.
My work included:
- Leading discovery efforts: 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 platforms to ensure a consistent, accessible experience across devices.
- Collaborating deeply 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.
Over time, I also helped influence our team's ways of working, introducing more collaborative design processes and helping define a hybrid agile model tailored to our needs.
Pictures from the workshop
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 following chapter captures moments from the workshop and illustrates how the blueprint shaped our shared understanding and collaboration moving forward.
I used annotations 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.
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.
Design in action: UI evolution that drives clarity and confidence
A core strength I bring as a UX designer is the ability to improve interfaces through structured, iterative design — always grounded in real user needs, business goals, and technical realities. This chapter visualizes some of the UI changes I’ve led across different projects, showing how I turn vague problems into clear, purposeful, and accessible interfaces.
My approach to UI evolution
Each of these examples of changes may seem small, but together they create a dramatically improved user experience. What ties them together is how I work:
- I start with the problem, not the UI.
- I co-create with others — developers, users, legal, and support teams.
- I test early with stakeholders and iterate based on feedback.
- I focus on clarity, structure, and confidence for the user at every step.
Old - Landing page
New - Landing page
- Redesigned the layout using components and structure from our new design system making everything accessible.
- 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.
Old - Case details
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.
Old - Create payment plan
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
Designing our way of working: from agile exploration to a hybrid Model
Clear communication and efficient collaboration are just as important within the team as they are in the product. As we scaled our design and development work, it became clear that our existing agile process wasn’t quite working for everyone. Different roles had different needs — and we needed a shared rhythm that supported both focus and flexibility.
To find a better way of working, I initiated and helped facilitate a series of agile workshops that brought together developers, designers, product owners, and operations roles. Our goal: to examine what was working, what wasn’t, and how we might adapt our methodology to better fit the nature of our work and the people doing it.
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
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.
New design
Old design
Want to know more?
