American Express
My Account UX Strategy

Project completed at Smart Design

The My Account Page (MYCA) is the landing page every Amex member sees after logging into their account. It’s the main point of engagement for over 100M cardmembers. Yet, most cardmembers ignored the page. They logged in, checked their balance, paid their bill and left. Worse they gave the page low marks in surveys. The Amex team reached out to Smart Design for help.

I pitched and won the project working with a biz dev lead. I then led a team of 2 designers to deliver the program.

New MYCA design concept provided to the Amex team and agency partner for implementation

Approaching the problem
We started by aligning on the problem to solve. The MYCA core team was a small group, but they had wide-ranging stakeholders across the business. Every team inside Amex had an interest in the My Account page. And, they all had to be brought along for the ride.

The existing MYCA page at the time (circa 2011)

Working with cardmembers
We took a participatory design approach, working with a small group of Amex customers through multiple rounds of qualitative interviews and iterative prototyping. Our work defined a new strategic vision and design direction for account page.

Essential to the process was understanding the company and their cardmember service culture and practices. A key moment occurred when we visited a call center, spending a day listening in on calls and talking with reps about how they deliver service.

Multiple rounds of card sorting

In-person account walk-thrus

Paper-based prototype testing

Build-your-own paper prototyping

 “Mine” and “Yours”
This was the key insight that became the foundation of the overall strategy.

  • “Mine” is cardmembers spending transactions, bill payment responsibility and rewards.

  • “Yours” is all the benefits, perks and specials American Express has to offer.

Both are important but cardmembers need to take care of the “Mine” before engaging the “Yours”. The existing MYCA page was dominated by “Yours”, creating the sense of a very one-sided relationship and a noisy experience for cardmembers.

 

Defining relationship care online
American Express had a well defined approach to engaging cardmembers on the phone. Their call center operations were impressive and regularly won service awards from JD Power and others. By contrast, the web lacked a service vision and practice. Building on the Mine-Yours framework, we defined core principles for relationship care online.

  • Give the cardmember their information first.

  • Reflect the Cardmember in the relationship.

  • Provide a lead-in to explore more.

 

Redesigning the MYCA page
We translated the Mine-Yours framework and Online Relationship Care Principles into a new interface design and initial wireframes for the MYCA page. This provided the Amex team and their agency partner with a clear direction for execution and ongoing development over time.

UI framework for a new MYCA page

 

An enduring design framework
The first release of the new MYCA page represented a massive change. It prioritized the “Mine” so cardmembers could address their needs right away. It positioned the “Yours” as an easy lead-in for exploration. Subsequent releases have built on this same framework, improving the interface and functionality for the “Mine” while personalizing and improving engagement with the “Yours”.

MYCA – Before (2011)

MYCA – Before (2011)

MYCA – Today

MYCA – Today

MYCA – After (2012)

MYCA – After (2012)

Thank you’s
Project completed in 2011 while at Smart Design. Design team included Jessi Pervola & Philip Hartley. Thank you Daphne Nash for helping land the project and manage the large and varied client!