Catherine
Power

Catherine Power
Catherine Power Designer → Strategist

I design complex, end to end systems and align cross functional teams to deliver cohesive user experiences. My goal is to bridge product, design, and business strategy to drive measurable outcomes.

Why strategy? Years of designing within Vanguard's most complex financial systems — from retirement planning tools to cross-domain experience architecture — taught me that the hardest design problems aren't visual. They're organizational. I want to operate where design meets systems thinking, alignment, and long-term product vision.

Experience Architecture Systems Thinking Cross-functional Alignment Decision Design Design Systems & Scalability Outcome-Driven Strategy
00 The Transition
Designer → UX Strategist

From making it
to shaping how
it gets made.

I've spent years doing the work — designing flows, building systems, running critiques, mapping architectures. That hands-on design foundation allows me to understand what goes into a project from start to finish. I know exactly what it costs to change a system late, what happens when teams aren't aligned, and what a user actually needs at a decision point.

Working in this role will open up doors to operate earlier in the process. I would love to be a part of what gets built, how teams collaborate, and how experiences connect across Vanguard — and not just executing within those constraints.

What I bring from design

  • 15 years inside complex financial UX systems
  • Translated financial models into user flows
  • Cross-functional work with product & strategy
  • Design system ownership across multiple teams
  • Led critique culture & design governance

Where I envision

  • Defining experience vision across domains
  • Aligning orgs around user outcomes
  • Shaping how systems connect — not just look
  • Strategic partner to product & leadership
01 Selected Work
9 Projects
01

Vanguard · Financial UX · Decision Systems · Advisor Tools

TERS & TORI — Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategy + Tax Optimization Recommendation Interface

Designed end-to-end retirement planning experiences across two interconnected products: TERS (retirement income strategy with Social Security timing, withdrawal sequencing, and Roth conversion tools) and TORI (advisor-facing recommendation interface enabling advisors to surface tax optimization strategies and guide clients through acceptance).

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The Problem

Retirement decisions are deeply interdependent — tax-deferred vs. Roth vs. taxable, Social Security timing, withdrawal order. Existing tools lacked continuity and made it hard for users to understand tradeoffs across time.

My Role

  • Designed end-to-end experience over 4 years
  • Translated financial models into intuitive flows
  • Built withdrawal strategy flows + Roth conversion calculator
  • Designed recommendation & projection outputs
  • Collaborated with product, strategy & financial modeling teams

Strategic Approach

  • Broke complex multi-variable logic into step-by-step flows
  • Designed decision frameworks for high-stakes planning
  • Used visualizations to communicate long-term outcomes
  • Balanced accuracy with usability at key decision points

Scope

4-year engagement · TERS: end-to-end retirement income planning · TORI: dual-interface advisor + client recommendation tool

Reflection

These two products together show the full arc — designing the financial decision itself (TERS) and designing how that decision moves between advisor and client (TORI).

Why It's Strategic

Both required translating financial complexity into human decision flows across different user contexts — the definition of design strategy applied to high-stakes systems.

Impact

TERS: Created an actionable retirement income planning experience enabling users to understand complex tax strategies and build confidence in high-stakes decisions. TORI: Enabled advisors to seamlessly surface tax strategies to clients, creating a shared decision-making experience across a dual-interface system.

Designed Interfaces — TERS Product

Roth conversion calculator — laptop mockup

Roth Conversion Calculator — recommendation output with estimated conversion amount and tax cost breakdown

TORI intro page — Get more in retirement

Advisor intro page — "Get more in retirement" with 4-step onboarding flow and advisor drawer

Recommended strategy — share OFF state

Recommended strategy — advisor review state with strategy not yet shared (toggle OFF)

Recommended strategy — share ON state

Recommended strategy — share ON state, advisor confirmed discussion with client

Strategy accepted state

Strategy accepted — confirmed state with client view enabled, compare strategies panel

Roth conversion calculator full page

Roth Conversion Calculator — full recommendation page with tax breakdown, Medicare IRMAA, and sharing checklist

Inputs used — demographic and income data

Inputs used — demographic and income inputs displayed alongside the recommendation for transparency

Process & Strategy Artifacts

Zero-Based Design Exercises — Context mapping facilitation

Zero-Based Design Exercises — Context mapping facilitation (laptop mockup)

ZBD Exercises Template — Mural board with exercises 1.1 and 1.2

ZBD Exercises Template — Context mapping + affinity clustering exercises

Full ZBD Mural board overview

Full ZBD Mural board — advisor and client exercise sequences

Feature prioritization Q1 2022 — Discovery prioritization dashboard

Feature/Discovery Prioritization Dashboard — Q1 2022 impact + effort analysis

TORI creatives and analysts needs backlog matrix

TORI Creatives & Analysts Needs — Backlog matrix across strategy, design, analytics

Data Integrity Message Discovery board

Data Integrity Message — Discovery board with problem definition, user needs, design options

Advisor Drawer Discovery board

Advisor Drawer — Discovery board with user testing needs, systems mapping, advisor flows

03

Vanguard · Experience Architecture · Org Alignment

DA / PA / WM Experience Architecture

As Vanguard restructured across Investment Management, Advice, and Wealth Management, I defined how experiences connect across domains — reducing fragmentation and enabling cohesive journeys across digital and advisor-led channels.

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The Problem

Vanguard's restructuring created fragmented experiences across Advice, Brokerage, Wealth Management, and internal Crew tools. Users encountered disconnected journeys and poor handoffs between self-service and advisor-led channels.

My Role

  • Partnered with stakeholders to define cross-domain connections
  • Mapped how users move across DA → PA → WM
  • Defined transition and handoff points between channels
  • Bridged client-facing and internal Crew systems
  • Contributed to future-state experience architecture

Strategic Approach

  • Mapped ecosystem fragmentation across domains
  • Identified critical transition moments in journeys
  • Aligned stakeholders across team boundaries
  • Built shared vision for connected experience ecosystem

Stakeholders

Digital Advice · Personal Advisor · Wealth Management · Investment Management · Crew Experience

Why It's Strategic

Pure UX Strategy — working across org boundaries to shape how an ecosystem connects, requiring organizational influence as much as design skill.

Reflection

Alignment at the org level has to come before alignment at the experience level. You can't design your way out of a misaligned system.

Impact

Improved continuity across user journeys, supported a more unified product ecosystem, and enabled stronger alignment between teams operating across organizational and domain boundaries.

Visuals to be added: ecosystem / architecture diagrams · DA → PA → WM journey flows · stakeholder frameworks

04

Vanguard · Design Systems · Governance · Leadership

C11n Design System & Governance

Led adoption of Vanguard's C11n design system across teams — guiding transition from legacy patterns, reinforcing consistency through weekly design critiques, and reducing siloed decision-making at scale.

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The Problem

Multiple teams used inconsistent patterns, creating fragmentation, rework, and a lack of shared design language. The legacy system couldn't scale with organizational growth and product complexity.

My Role

  • Guided transition from legacy system to C11n
  • Ensured consistent component usage across teams
  • Ran weekly design critiques across the org
  • Increased visibility into active design work
  • Reduced siloed decision-making

Design Critique Practice

Weekly critiques created a shared forum — aligning designers, reinforcing system usage, surfacing active work, and building a culture of collective decision-making, not just individual execution.

Scope

Multi-team adoption · Weekly governance cadence · Legacy → C11n migration

Reflection

The critique practice was as important as the system itself. Shared decision-making is what sustains a design system — not documentation alone.

Why It's Strategic

Design system work at this scale is organizational strategy — creating shared language, governance, and cultural practices that let design scale without fragmenting.

Impact

More cohesive user experience across products, reduced design rework and inconsistency, and stronger cross-team collaboration through shared design language and governance culture.

04

QVC · E-commerce · Personalization

Recommendations Exploration

Explored and designed a product recommendations experience for QVC — rethinking how the carousel behaves, how products are surfaced, and how recommendation logic connects to the browsing experience across desktop and mobile.

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Focus

Designed recommendation carousel patterns, product display variants, tab structures, and PDP-level recommendation placements — exploring how to increase product discovery and conversion across QVC's digital experience.

Deliverables

  • Carousel redesign exploration
  • Tab display and product rec variants
  • Desktop and mobile carousel layouts
  • Product recommendation on PDP
  • Scroll interaction prototyping

Strategic Value

Recommendation systems are where personalization meets commerce strategy. This work required thinking both about interaction patterns and how the underlying data model shapes the user experience.

Research & Strategy

Research notes — cross-sell, personalization, recommendation types

Research synthesis — Baymard cross-sell guidelines, personalization vs. recommendation types, 10 carousel placement contexts

Competitive analysis — Glossier, Nordstrom, Wayfair

Competitive analysis — recommendation patterns across Glossier, Nordstrom, and Wayfair

Product Design Micro Test Phase 1 — touchpoints and carousel modules

Product Design — Micro Test Phase 1 planning: 14 touchpoints mapped, carousel module types defined

Carousel Design Explorations

Carousel 1 vs 1.1 — pagination dot variants

Carousel 1 vs 1.1 — pagination dot placement and navigation arrow variants

Carousel 2 vs 2.2 — card layout variants

Carousel 2 vs 2.2 — card layout with partial next-item reveal

Carousel 3 vs 3.1 — 'Want more fall fashion?' CTA variant

Carousel 3 vs 3.1 — end-of-carousel CTA card: "Want more fall fashion?" exploration

Looks we love — bags carousel

Live carousel — "Looks we love: Fall Fits" bags with New / Easy Pay labels and wishlist

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Scroll interaction

Scroll interaction prototype — carousel scroll behavior animation

Recommendation Placements — Live Patterns

Explore Electronics — tab-based recommendation

Explore Electronics — tab-style recommendation ("More in Canon" variant)

We think you'll love these — personalized reco with See All

"We think you'll love these" — personalized recommendation with See All end card

05

QVC · E-commerce · Product Experience

Product Detail Page Redesign

Redesigned QVC's product detail page across apparel and electronics categories — improving information hierarchy, warranty presentation, and the mobile experience to reduce friction and increase purchase confidence.

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Focus

Rethought product detail hierarchy for both apparel and electronics — designing for key decision points, warranty presentation, and button states across desktop and mobile contexts.

Deliverables

  • Desktop and mobile PDP layouts
  • Apparel-specific product detail design
  • Warranty experience (animated)
  • Button state system
  • Electronics PDP variant

Strategic Value

PDP design is conversion-critical — every decision about information hierarchy, trust signals, and interaction patterns directly affects purchase behavior.

Designed Interfaces — QVC Product Detail Page

QVC PDP — laptop mockup hero

QVC Product Detail Page — bareMinerals Rescue Stick with People Also Viewed rail, color swatches, Save with Sets

QVC PDP — flat view

PDP flat view — full layout with image gallery, EasyPay, color selection, reviews, and cross-sell

Research & Strategy — CX Runway

CX Runway Research

CX Runway Research — SpeedBuy data: 90% conversion rate, 21% revenue share, 550k mobile PDP clicks. Grounded design in real metrics.

Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis — PDP patterns across AE, Anthropologie, Glossier, Nordstrom, Target, and Wayfair

PDP Testing Playbook

PDP Testing Playbook — top initiatives (mobile first, PDP as landing page) and 10 A/B test opportunities

Design System — Button States & Interactions

Button states

Button states system — image/color + text variants across in stock, waitlist, sold out, hover, selected. 44px minimum touch target.

Warranty interaction

Warranty modal — animated post-add-to-cart upsell for product protection

Dev Specs — Desktop & Mobile

Desktop PDP dev spec

Desktop PDP annotated spec — photo/video, product title, price block, color matrix, promotion messaging

Mobile PDP dev spec

Mobile PDP annotated spec — scroll-through thumbnails, square color matrix with material images, size guide, delivery options

Final Mobile Designs

Mobile PDP mockup

Mobile PDP — apparel product with color swatches and EasyPay

Mobile PDP flat apparel

Mobile PDP flat — Similar Products + Recently Viewed rails, size fit indicator

Mobile PDP electronics

Mobile PDP electronics — warranty upsell modal, EasyPay, SpeedBuy CTA

06

AI Labs · FinTech · Dashboard Design

Axiom Client Dashboard

Designed a financial dashboard that allows users to easily digest their household's financial information — dividing complex data into digestible sections without overwhelming the user.

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Challenge

Financial dashboards often overwhelm users with data. The goal was to design an overview of a household's financial picture that felt clear and digestible — not like a data dump.

Approach

  • Divided household data into clear, separate sections
  • Prioritized overview-first information hierarchy
  • Grounded design in user research and whiteboard sessions
  • Designed desktop dashboard layout

Process

Research-grounded from the start — included whiteboarding and user testing sessions before moving to high-fidelity design, ensuring the architecture matched real user mental models.

Designed Interface — Axiom Client Dashboard

Axiom client dashboard — laptop lifestyle mockup

Axiom — financial dashboard with My Advisor panel, 90% Probability of Success indicator, Investment Allocation donut chart, and Net Worth summary

Process — Discovery, IA & Whiteboard Sessions

Advisor whiteboard — we have / we will have / big ideas

Advisor session — "We Have / We Will Have" framework: messaging, notifications, scheduling, household profiles, top clients. Big ideas: clean utilitarian aesthetic, avoid information flooding.

Advisor view IA whiteboard — 6 nav areas + screen sketches

Advisor view IA — 6 navigation areas (dashboard, clients, team, messaging, reports, help) with sketched wireframes pinned above

Advisor messaging feature sticky note IA

Messaging feature IA — sticky note mapping of DMs, chat history, full/mini/group chat, threads, search, tagging, offline messaging, audio conferencing

Dashboard sketches — my finances, networth CTA, planning iframe

Dashboard sketches — My Finances widget, Net Worth CTA cards (dismissable), Planning iframe with Goals prompt

Universal Add Flow sketch — 4-step flow

Universal Add Flow — 4-step sketch: select category → type selection → fill info → animated confirmation with nav routing logic

Client profile whiteboard wireframe — main + detail + add

Client profile wireframe — main view (about, accounts, property), detail view (personal property, real estate), add flow (name, type, value, growth rate)

Axiom Messaging — Designed Interfaces

Axiom messaging — iPhone mockup

Axiom Messaging — mobile message list with More Recent / All Households / Archived tabs and grouped household conversations

Messages list — flat mobile view

Mobile messages — conversation list with household groupings, avatar stacks, and timestamps

Axiom messaging desktop — thread view with People + Fact Finder panel

Desktop messaging — three-panel layout: conversation list · thread view with read receipts and quick replies · People + Fact Finder sidebar

Messaging whiteboard sketches — insurance flow + conversation view

Messaging whiteboard — insurance update flow, notification states, conversation view with send + document CTAs

Messaging whiteboard — client features, read receipts, add to message

Client features whiteboard — message history, read receipts, add to a message, offline messaging notification flow

Messaging whiteboard — insurance tagging and account linking

Tagging and account linking — conversation with insurance/accounts/property sections, needs checklist: history ✓, tagging ☐, read receipts ✓, embedded content ✓

07

Xfinity · Decision Tools · Conversion

Help Me Decide Tool

Created a "Help Me Decide" tool that guided users into the BuyFlow more easily — resulting in a significant conversion rate lift by removing decision paralysis at a critical funnel moment.

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The Problem

Users were abandoning the purchase flow due to decision paralysis when faced with product options. They needed a guided experience to help them choose the right product with confidence.

The Solution

Designed a decision-making tool that asked the right questions, filtered options, and guided users directly into the BuyFlow — reducing friction at the most critical conversion point.

Outcome

Significant conversion rate lift — a clear example of how decision design, not just visual design, drives measurable business outcomes.

Designed Interface — Help Me Decide Tool

Help Me Decide — tailored results iMac mockup

Help Me Decide — "Here are offers tailored for you" results with left-rail answer summary, editable filters, and personalized package grid

Quiz Flow — Step by Step

Step 1 — What are you shopping for?

Step 1 — "What are you shopping for today?" Internet + TV selected

Step 2 — Find My Speed

Step 2 — "Find My Speed" — device count mapped to recommended Mbps ranges (10–300 Mbps)

Step 3 — Select must-have channels

Step 3 — Must-have channel tier selector (10+ to 260+) with full channel grid

Step 4 — Premium channels Yes/No

Step 4 — "Are you interested in streaming premium channels?" Yes (Showtime + HBO) / No

User Flow & Results

User flow diagram

User flow — All Offers Landing Page → Find My Best Fit Package → Internet or Internet+TV → Find My Speed → filtered results

Find My Speed iMac mockup

Find My Speed — speed tier modal with device count selector, in context of Xfinity shop

Final filtered results — Find the Perfect Deal For You

"Find the Perfect Deal For You" — 4 packages filtered by quiz answers, pre-sorted by price

Results flat — editable answer rail

Results with editable answer summary rail and 3 filtered Internet + TV offers

Inline edit — Internet step active

Inline editing — first question active mid-results, editable without losing context

Why me for this role

I operate at the
intersection of
design and strategy.

With five years of experience designing within Vanguard's most complex systems, I've developed a strong understanding of where strategy breaks down in execution — and how to align teams to deliver on it.

Product Thinker
TERS · TORI

I translate complex financial systems into experiences users can navigate — making high-stakes decisions approachable, clear, and actionable at every step.

Systems Thinker
Architecture

I design the connective tissue between products — mapping user movement across touchpoints, defining transition moments, and reducing fragmentation at an ecosystem level.

Org Influencer
C11n · Governance

I build shared structures that let organizations design consistently at scale — through systems, governance practices, and critique cultures that outlast any single project.

02 Let's Talk

Design taught me how to solve problems.
Strategy is how I'll shape them.

I'm applying for the UX Strategist role at Vanguard because I already understand the systems, the domain, and the organizational complexity — and I'm ready to operate where design meets decision-making, alignment, and long-term product vision.

Get in touch →
03 Writing
Vanguard UX Medium

Published on Vanguard UX · Medium

Empathy: Why It's Good and How to Nurture It

Contributed to Vanguard's UX publication on Medium — writing about the role of empathy in design practice and how teams can build and sustain it as a core capability.

Read on Medium →

Vanguard UX · Publication

"Empathy: Why It's Good and How to Nurture It"

Writing about design practice — how empathy shapes decision-making and what it takes to build it as an organizational muscle, not just an individual skill.

medium.com/vanguard-ux