Leeza Dennis /
🏦
When Nobody Understands the System: Redesigning for a Global Institution
🏦

When Nobody Understands the System: Redesigning for a Global Institution

 
To protect the IMF’s propriety tools and other confidential work, certain information has been redacted or blurred.
Team: International Monetary Fund
Role: Lead UX Researcher and Service Designer
Industry: Finance
Duration: 1.5 Years
 
Project Overview
One of the main goals of the International Monetary Fund is to help nations around the world with capacity-building (the strengthening of of a country’s skills, abilities, processes, and resources).
 
I led UX and Service Design for the high-priority project, and improved the capacity development platform used by economists and government authorities across 190+ countries.
 
Outcomes:
  • Made an invisible system visible
  • Diagnosed infrastructure gaps that blocked all improvement efforts
  • Built foundational infrastructure from scratch
  • Identified critical bottlenecks through discovery research
  • Designed practical solutions within restraints
  • Created scalable processes for ongoing maintenance
 
Estimated reading Time:
 

I. Introduction

 
Context
The IMF is an agency of the United Nations, and they work across 190+ countries to maintain the global economy. The IMF plays three roles in serving its membership. These are:
  • Economic Surveillance and Policy Advice
  • Financial Assistance
  • Capacity Development
The vertical that I helped to improve was Capacity Development (training and technical assistance on economic policy issues to central banks and other governing bodies for developing countries to help foster their capacity).
 
The IMF’s public-facing site for their Capacity Development work.
The IMF’s public-facing site for their Capacity Development work.
The Problem
In order to plan, manage, and deliver Capacity Development across the world, the IMF uses a tool called Town Map. Town Map had been launched 2 years before for 2000+ users, and was overwhelmingly met with negative user feedback.
 
 
The Constraints
  • Third-party platform with limited customization
  • Mismatch between user needs and platform capabilities
  • Multiple stakeholder groups (economists, government authorities, internal teams)
  • International context with diverse user base
 
My Role
  • Lead UX Researcher and Service Designer
  • Led a small, cross-functional team
  • Coordinated with developers, stakeholders, end users
 

II. Scope and Align

Scoping the Work
One issue my team kept running into, time and time again, was that no one had a shared understanding of Town Map. We were asked to improve a system that no single person could describe in its entirety. When working, I always ask myself, “What’s going on here?”, and no one really knew the answer to that. They just knew it was bad. With that, I decided to launch a discovery research campaign to get a better understanding, from the user-perspective, of what exactly was going on.
 

III. Methodology

  • Systems analysis to understand the full service ecosystem
  • Stakeholder mapping (economists, authorities, IT, management)
  • Gap analysis (what exists vs. what's needed)
  • Collaborative problem-solving with technical teams

Our Process

  • Analyzed system architecture and constraints
  • Worked with developers to extract data (identified 140 emails, 274 errors)
  • Manually triggered and documented communications to create inventory
  • [Any user research you did - interviews, observation, support ticket analysis]

Insights

  • Insight 1: Missing infrastructure prevented systematic improvement
    • No content inventory existed
    • Unable to assess consistency or identify patterns
    • Created organizational dependency on tribal knowledge
  • Insight 2: System-generated communications failed to meet user needs
    • Error messages were technical, not user-centered
    • Missing context about what users should do next
    • Inconsistent terminology across touchpoints
  • Insight 3: Platform constraints required strategic prioritization
    • Couldn't fix everything within timeline/budget
    • Needed data-driven approach to identify highest-impact interventions
 

IV. Deliverables

  • Content inventory (30 emails documented, 720 errors catalogued)
  • 9 User Journey Maps
  • Service Blueprints that mapped how communication flowed throughout the system
  • An ecosystem map that pinpointed why certain bottlenecks or friction occured
  • Gap analysis documentation
  • Prioritization framework