Structuring a systemic diagnostic model
Role: Strategic design lead (Systems, governance, & diagnostic strategy)
Goal: Transitioning the organisation from subjective audits to objective experience governance.
Scaling quality across a legacy portfolio requires moving beyond better UI and into the realm of experience governance. By architecting the Experience Maturity Scorecard (EMS), I established a systemic diagnostic layer that allows us to measure, track, and elevate product health at scale. We transitioned from subjective look and feel audits to an objective, cross-functional governance model that ensures long-term sustainability and brand integrity.
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The impact
- Data-driven investment The business now has a clear overview of experience health across the UK tax portfolio, allowing leadership to allocate resources to high-risk areas based on objective data.
- Proactive accessibility governance We moved from reactive bug-fixing to preventing accessibility issues, with the Experience Maturity Scorecard now serving as a reference point for quality across the ecosystem.
- Objective experience metrics Transformed subjective design feedback into an objective business metric using a standardised red/amber/green ranking system.
The modernisation lottery
In a global organisation managing a diverse digital portfolio, a significant risk is the compounding accumulation of experience debt. We were facing a significant systemic friction point where inconsistent interaction patterns and varying levels of technical maturity across our products were slowing down development velocity. It wasn’t just that certain pages felt old, it was that we had no objective way to measure how they were falling behind or how to prioritise the investment needed to fix them. (Read: we were essentially guessing where the design debt was deepest, and the loud voices usually got the funding.)
Experience as a governance function
I identified that we needed to move design from a reactive delivery service to a proactive governance function. I worked to shift the focus away from superficial aesthetics toward a systemic health check that could be applied to any product in the ecosystem. This wasn’t about a one-off cleanup, it was about building a diagnostic system that empowered teams to assess their own product quality from multiple angles. By quantifying UX debt as a business metric, I made it possible for leadership to see experience quality as a risk management factor rather than just a design preference.
This is a great assessment, and I feel I’ve now a clear overview of where opportunities are.
— E. Casali, Design Director
A shared system for tracking portfolio health
I built a diagnostic system that allows us to track and improve product health across the entire portfolio. By moving from subjective opinions to a clear, scorecard-based model, we made it possible to see exactly where experience debt is highest. This ensures our standards are grounded in technical reality, allowing leadership to treat quality as a measurable business risk rather than just a design preference.
What did I do on this project?
- Orchestrated portfolio governance Led cross-functional sessions with leadership to align on what good looks like, creating a shared language for experience quality that spans product, engineering, and design.
- Prioritised strategic investment Developed the heat-mapping methodology that allows leadership to see exactly where experience debt is highest, moving the organisation from anecdotal requests to data-driven resource allocation.
- De-risked the roadmap Established the diagnostic gates required to identify accessibility and responsiveness risks before they reached the customer, effectively moving quality control further upstream.
- Operationalised quality checks Designed the self-serve auditing tools and scoping kits that allow product teams to measure their own experience maturity without depending on central design leadership.