Case Study 01 · Platform Strategy

Notification & Messaging Strategy

Role: Design Lead, end-to-end
Context: Experian Consumer Services · 22M+ users
Year: 2022 - 2024

The problem

Experian's consumer app talks to 22M+ users through hundreds of alert types, including credit changes, product opportunities, fraud, marketing, and servicing. When I inherited the notification and messaging layer, there was no shared model for what any of it meant. Users were overwhelmed, high-signal alerts were buried under low-signal ones, and support volume was climbing. Every product team was adding messages against the same crowded surface, and no one owned the system.

What I led

I set the strategy for the platform end-to-end. I audited 200+ live alert types with product and engineering, built the urgency and sentiment frameworks that gave every future message a defensible reason to exist, and wrote the content guidelines the org still uses. I redesigned the notification center itself across desktop and mobile around a clear hierarchy, and gave users granular preferences so control sits where it belongs. I led the cross-functional rollout across product, content, engineering, and support, and stayed on it through ship.

Outcome

$200M

Revenue quarter directly contributed to by the messaging center redesign

34% higher engagement on alerts. 14% revenue lift attributed to the redesigned messaging surface. Meaningful reductions in servicing volume.

The messaging center was a direct contributor to Experian's $200M revenue quarter. That is evidence that platform-layer design decisions are business-layer decisions when they're owned end-to-end.

Gallery

Notification decision tree framework — Decision tree: when, how, and where to notify

Messaging strategy framework - urgency tiers

Messaging strategy framework - sentiment & tone

Content reduction before/after — Content audit and reduction across 200+ alert types

User-controllable notification preferences — Granular preferences put control back with the user