Project Summary
CONTEXT
This project took place within ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The legal team’s work is high-stakes: mistakes could impact millions in charitable revenue. The project had been underway for over a year, with external vendors and technical specifications drafted before UX intervention. I joined late, initially tasked with reviewing design compliance, but uncovered systemic misalignment between the proposed app and real user needs.
The Problem
ALSAC’s legal team manages nearly half of St. Jude’s $2.1 billion in revenue through complex estate and trust gifts. At the time, their workflow was almost entirely manual, relying on spreadsheets due to a failed legacy system that functioned more like a filing cabinet than a tool. A year-long project with a third-party vendor was underway, promising an app that, upon review, offered basic dashboards and vague features, completely misaligned with the team’s actual needs. I joined late, expecting a design check, but quickly realized the project was on track to fail.
Our SOLUTION
In just three weeks, I took lead with another UX designer to deeply understand the team’s needs. We conducted targeted interviews, mapped workflows, identified pain points, and redesigned the system’s core. Key solutions included:
Automation flows to streamline recurring tasks.
A custom letter template builder for legal correspondence.
Clear definition of essential data points aligned with real workflows.
These efforts created a concrete vision of a functional, user-centered solution. Ultimately, we severed ties with the vendor and found a new vendor that was able to handle the complexity and assist in balancing out-of-the-box solutions with custom development work.
My Role
I acted as lead UX designer alongside another UX designer, aligning our team and guiding stakeholders to understand the critical gaps in the proposed solution. I led the end-to-end design of a completely new application, creating more than 25 screens that addressed the team’s actual workflows, automated key tasks, and provided a functional, user-centered experience. My work ensured the final vision was actionable, clearly communicated, and fully aligned with user needs.
User interviews and research for requirements
Primary correspondence with users/business stakeholders for additional requirements
Led design of mockups using power app components
User Story and acceptance criteria writing for handoff to third-party
Assistance with deciding on which new third-party vendor to use
Voice of the user when they are not in the meeting
The Impact
While we ended up cutting our losses on an expensive and time consuming vendor, the legal team finally felt heard for the first time in years. The internal development team also finally trusted the design process and truly understood the complex needs of the legal team and could fight for them, and we had well-defined requirements to use for a more realistic Request for Proposal as we looked for a new vendor. For me, the project meant stepping into a leadership role I hadn’t planned for and leaving with stronger relationships than when I started.
The legal team processes nearly half the $2.1 billion needed to fund st. Jude Children’s Research hospital each year.
Their workflow is complex, high stakes and almost entirely manual, relying on painstakingly inputting data into spreadsheets due to a failed legacy system that offers little more than the duties of a filing system with a login.
A screenshot of the system they were using. It shows the dashboard with cards of recently updated accounts, but they capture essentially useless information with nothing regarding which analyst owns the account, where it is in the system or taskflow management.
So they hired a third-party vendor to improve their workflow with a brand new application.
A year of research resulted in a basic dashboard and vague promises of adding features later. But, there was zero representation of the team’s actual needs like automated task management and templated legal correspondence.
This shows the dashboard for the proposed solution. Similar to what they had, but these are actually less useful. This card here showing tasks with 24 tasks assigned to you epitomizes how far afield the team was. A typical analyst will have 250-500 tasks assigned to them at a time. Seeing a number like that is overwhelming and disheartening. What they needed was solution that helped them break these down into manageable chunks.
But The users’ concerns were repeatedly dismissed.
So I started asking My Own questions.
And it ruffled some feathers.
But I refused to rubber stamp a solution that would waste time, money, and credibility.
WORKING ON BORROWED TIME, I took advantage of the users’ unique awareness of their own processes and needs.
I brought back proof the proposal missed the mark entirely, but they weren’t convinced.
So they granted me 3 weeks to show what the users really needed.
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I Mapped complex task automation and defined requirements for implementation
There were more than 30 tasks that needed to be auto-generated at various points in the lifecycle of a bequest. I mapped each of these along that lifecycle and provided examples of what each task would look like as well as an excel spreadsheet that would allow the 3rd party team to take this and run with it.
I identified 20+ critical data fields missing from the project scope
Without these fields, the legal team would continue to spend hours each day manually pulling data from reports and inputting it into a spreadsheet.
I Streamlined The letter generator to handle complex correspondence
With dozens of letter templates to accommodate every scenario, I rethought the concept and found a solution to plug and play with the generator.
Select a general template
Adds the opening paragraph and closing paragraph
INSERT CONTACTS
Select contacts associated with the bequest to insert names and contact information automatically
Add any inclusions
Plug in templated center paragraphs to account for things like or documentation requests
MAKE EDITS
The inline editor allows the staff to customize as needed.
Attach documents
Adds documents attached to the bequest record
PULL your signature
A standard template keeps all correspondence from St. Jude consistent but supports self-service.
Export the letter
Email or download the letter from here and a copy is saved to the documents.
we applIED all of our findings to a re-Envisioned workspace with easy-to-follow instructions for the vendor to run with.
With dozens of letter templates to accommodate every scenario, I rethought the concept and found a solution to plug and play with the generator.
The reimagined dashboard was customized to the user to support task management and streamlined workflows
For each mockup, I handed off user stories and detailed annotations to assist the vendor in understanding the core need along with an example of how it could be executed.
In the end, we severed ties with the vendor; but, THE TEAM HAS a better understanding of our business partners’ needs.
We had to cut our losses on the work already completed. However, the ALSAC team now had a clear visual of what was truly needed, and, most importantly, the legal team gained advocates who understood their workflows and were committed to delivering a solution that matched the complexity of their work.
I also strengthened my relationship with both the Solutions Architect and the legal team, and I am now considered the voice of the user on all project calls when the team cannot be present. Leadership and the project team have recognized my contributions as critical to saving the project long-term, even if it meant short-term losses. Since then, I’ve been helping onboard the new vendor, ensuring core requirements are clearly understood and translating them into actionable tickets to kick off development of the new system.
