Transforming Vanguard’s Digital Experience

At the beginning of the year, my design team was looking for where we could make the greatest impact. Vanguard’s primary investor experience had evolved over many years and was doing a lot at once: products, tools, news, education and account access.

I saw an opportunity to rethink that experience and partnered with Rich Braunsberg, Vanguard’s head editor, to develop the idea and bring it to marketing leadership. With executive support and funding secured by Michael Roberts, we brought in frog design for a focused strategy and design engagement.

The work did not begin as an assigned redesign. It began by seeing a problem worth solving and creating the momentum to make it happen.

frog led the strategy and design work. I led the Vanguard side of the engagement: onboarding the partner, navigating approvals, connecting them with the right people, keeping the work moving, and embedding myself and members of my design team alongside their strategists and designers.

In a large organization, getting good work started can be as challenging as the design itself. I worked through the organizational friction so the teams could stay focused on the experience.

The engagement brought together frog’s external perspective with Vanguard’s knowledge of investors, content, brand and the realities of a complex digital ecosystem. Workshops created a shared space to explore what a more human investor experience could become.

My team participated directly rather than waiting for a finished recommendation. That was intentional. They needed to understand the thinking behind the work, not just inherit screens at the end.

I wanted the engagement to build capability inside Vanguard, not create dependency on an outside partner. By embedding Vanguard designers throughout the process, we built shared understanding of the research, concepts, navigation thinking and emerging experience direction.

When frog’s engagement ended, the internal team had the context to take over more seamlessly and continue developing the experience.

The engagement established a new direction for Vanguard’s investor experience and gave the internal team a foundation it could continue to evolve. The work moved beyond simply reorganizing a homepage toward a more human way of thinking about how investors encounter Vanguard across devices.

For me, the project is also a story about design leadership: recognizing an opportunity, building support around it, bringing the right expertise together, and making sure the organization could sustain the work after the engagement ended.