CASE STUDY 03
Designing
digital
Transformation
Unifying fragmented agent tools and deepening 980,000 member relationships - two interconnected transformation workstreams for one of Alberta's most trusted organizations.
PRODUCT DESIGN . SERVICE DESIGN
CLIENT
CAA-AMA
SCOPE
Agent Platform Redesign
MY ROLE
Product Designer
Digital Transformation
METHODS
User Research . Vision Workshops . Design . Testing
IMPACT
1 UNIFIED PLATFORM
6 BUSINESS UNITS
980K MEMBERS SERVED
OVERVIEW
One organization.
Two transformation
challenges.
AMA serves approximately 980,000 members across Alberta through over 1,500 agents spanning 6 distinct business units. My role as Product Designer - Digital Transformation, put me at the intersection of two major challenges: rebuilding the tools agents use every day, and rethinking how AMA grows and retains the members those agents serve.
This case study covers both workstreams — because they were never really separate problems.
980K
MEMBERS ACROSS ALBERTA
1500+
AGENTS ACROSS 6 BUSINESS UNITS
2
TRANSFORMATION WORKSTREAMS
WORKSTREAM 01
Agent Platform Unification
WORKSTREAM 02
Engagement Ecosystem Strategy
Replacing multiple disconnected legacy applications with one unified system - designed around how agents actually work.
A service design initiative to understand, grow, and retain AMA's member base through data-led design thinking.
WORKSTREAM 01 . AGENT PLATFORM
Too many apps.
Not enough clarity.
Agents across AMA's six business units relied on a fragmented collection of legacy applications to complete their daily tasks. Each system had its own logic, navigation, and limitations — creating constant context-switching, slow task completion, and a steep learning curve for new agents.
" The vision: one unified platform. Designed around how agents think, not how the legacy systems were built."
My contribution spanned the full design process - from leading user research and facilitating a cross-functional product vision workshop, to wireframing, usability testing, and hi-fidelity design delivery within AMA's existing design system.
USER RESEARCH
25 agents.
Unfiltered.
Together with two fellow designers, I conducted structured interviews with 25 agents across AMA's business units - deliberately sampling across tenures, roles, and levels of system familiarity. We weren't looking for complaints. We were looking for the gap between what agents needed and what the system gave them.
Daily Workflows & time on task
Application inventory & pain points
Supervision & approval hierarchies
Understanding what agents actually spent their time on - and where fragmented tools were costing them minutes they couldn't afford.
Mapping every tool in the current stack and probing where handoffs between systems broke down or created errors.
Capturing the organizational complexity behind each task - so the new system could support how decisions actually get made.
Research was followed by affinity mapping - organizing insights into three clear categories: what's working, what isn't, and where the opportunities lie. Experience maps then visualized the full agent journey across touch points, revealing systemic gaps invisible in any single conversation.
AGENT INTERVIEWS
STRATEGIC FACILITATION
Aligning a team
around shared north star.
Before a single wireframe was drawn, I organized and ran a Product Vision Workshop - a deliberate step to ensure cross-functional partners weren't just informed about the product direction, but invested in it. Split across two sessions, the workshop brought together development and product teams to build genuine empathy with agents and create a shared definition of what success looked like.
PRODUCT VISION WORKSHOP WITH STAKEHOLDERS
01
Empathy building
Participants engaged directly with agent research — not as a slide deck summary, but as a structured exercise to feel the friction firsthand.
02
Shared vision articulation
Teams co-created a product vision statement - establishing a common language for the "why" behind every feature decision that followed.
03
Artefact creation
Workshop materials were documented for reuse - as a reference for planning conversations and as an onboarding asset for new team members.
DESIGN PROCESS
From research
to shipped screens.
With vision aligned and flows validated, design moved into hi-fidelity - working directly within AMA's existing design system. But the most distinctive part of the design process wasn't the tool: it was the feedback culture.
10%
Early Detection Check
Peer review at concept stage - catch misalignment before it's expensive to fix.
50%
Peer + Team Review
When the work starts taking shape - enough to pressure-test structure and logic.
99%
Pre-Demo Polish
Final review before stakeholder presentation - not for major changes, for confidence.
The 10–50–99 Feedback Policy
AMA's design team ran a structured feedback rhythm that removed bias, built shared accountability, and kept design moving in the right direction - not just the comfortable one. It's one of the most effective design governance practices I've worked within.
MVP Scope
Six core agent workflows defined the initial release - each one selected based on frequency, pain severity, and strategic value to the business.
Membership Purchase
Member/customer lookup
Membership Unsubscription
Ad hoc card replacement
Membership event history
Billing
WORKSTREAM 02
ENGAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM
A strategic service design initiative to understand AMA members more deeply, grow into new markets, and retain the members the organization had already earned.
STRATEGIC SERVICE DESIGN
Keeping members
first and centre.
The Engagement Ecosystem wasn't a product feature - it was a strategic framework. Its goal: to build the systems, processes, and culture that would help AMA understand its members, develop products that remain relevant, and expand into new markets with confidence.
I led two test projects to apply the framework in practice and measure real outcomes: Learn to Drive and 1st Year Member Retention.
TEST PROJECT 01
Learn to Drive
TEST PROJECT 02
1st year Member Retention
01
02
03
Facilitated activity sessions with Driver Education stakeholders to surface tensions, validate positives, and frame opportunities.
Identified specific cohorts and designed a behavioural survey - internally tested and iterated before sending to the target group.
Used survey data to identify touchpoints, gaps, and users for deeper focus group sessions.
01
Partnered with Data Analytics and Business Transformation teams to explore member segmentation data and identify non-renewal patterns.
02
Created a high-level roadmap to align cross-team exploration - covering data analysis, customer segmentation, and cohort identification.
04
Conducted four focus-group sessions to explore the "why" behind member decisions and the factors driving zero-touchpoint scenarios.
03
Developed data visualisations across dimensions including Lifestage vs. Income, Lifestage vs. Tenure, and postal code mapping to surface geographic retention trends.
05
Delivered a comprehensive analysis to leadership - documented as a reusable framework for future research initiatives across AMA.
04
Identified potential non-renewal cohorts as the basis for executive-level retention strategy - setting the foundation for targeted interventions.
IMPACT
What this work
made possible.
Unified Agent Platform Foundation
Research and vision alignment created a shared foundation for a single platform to replace the fragmented legacy stack across 6 business units.
Cross-Functional Alignment
The Product Vision Workshop gave development and product teams a shared north star — reducing design-by-committee and opinion-led decision making.
Usability Tested Designs
The usability tests proved the value of testing competing designs - turning a technical constraint into a better outcome than the original concept.
Reusable Research Framework
Research and vision alignment created a shared foundation for a single platform to replace the fragmented legacy stack across 6 business units.
Data-Informed Retention Strategy
Member segmentation analysis identified specific non-renewal cohorts - giving leadership a concrete, data-backed starting point for retention investment.
Design Culture Strengthened
The 10–50–99 feedback practice embedded structured critique into the team's rhythm - reducing bias and improving the quality of decisions at every stage.
This engagement showed what happens when product design and service design work together - the agent tools got better because we understood the members they served, and the member strategy got sharper because we understood the agents delivering it.
NEXT CASE STUDY
DESIGNING FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
@CAA-AMA