Visa · 2025–2026

Getting customer evidence in before the work is scoped.

5,000+

consumers surveyed across our quantitative studies

5 → 1

Flex use cases narrowed for market entry

~50%

faster study turnaround with AI

attrition across nine people in two regions

Role: Head of Regional Design & Research, North America & Europe

In 2025 I founded Visa North America’s Design & Research function and built it inside the product organization it served, reporting to Global Design with dotted lines to the North America and later Europe product leaders. I hired a designer and a researcher, and midway through I took on Visa’s seven-person Europe team too, bringing the total to nine people across two regions, with no attrition. In 13 months my team and I designed and tested new products with more than 5,000 consumers across the US and Canada, shaping go/no-go and market-entry decisions in five priority areas, while the Europe team ran its own studies across the region. Our Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) work narrowed five use cases to the one the business chose for Canada, and the UX patterns we built became a playbook Global Design adopted. I made room for the team to rebuild how we worked with AI, and it cut study turnaround roughly in half.

This was the third design function I’d built from nothing, and the first I built from inside the business. My peers were product leaders, so I heard priorities while they were still forming. Every project had to pass three tests. It had to move a product OKR leadership already owned, feed a real product or go-to-market decision, and be able to scale across issuers, merchants, or markets. That rule kept a small team focused on the decisions that mattered, and AI made the team feel much bigger. The part I’m proudest of is less visible. Product leaders started calling us before they’d decided anything.

Person using the Pay Now or Later feature on a Visa card in the Visa mobile app — The Pay Now or Later feature in the Visa mobile app.

Reflection

What I measure a design team by now is how early it gets invited in. A team of three shaped decisions across five product areas because we sat close enough to the business to hear what was coming, and because AI let us cover more ground than our size allowed.

Leading two regions sharpened how I think about the job. Each business had its own customers, rules, and pressures, and the work had to fit them. Staying close to each region’s business was only half of it. The other half was keeping my teams tied into Global Design. They joined its critiques, shared research, and fed what we learned back into products like Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) . AI made that easier. A living research site traveled across Visa in a way a 60-page deck never would have.

The collaboration and strategic thought partnership that Kelly and her team demonstrate sets a new standard for how design and research bring tangible value to business partners. A dedicated D&R model under Kelly’s leadership provides iterative agility without compromising domain knowledge and rigor, ultimately helping us drive better product decisions, earlier.

— Andy Sun · VP Product Strategy, Head of Debit

You bring a vibrant, creative energy to the team and played such an important role in getting Flex off the ground.

— James Hake · Senior Manager, Visa Strategic Initiatives

Operating model

Building inside the business

Visa’s Global Design team builds products for the whole world, but a product like Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) has to work differently in each region. Many European consumers lean on debit and are wary of credit, while North Americans are far more comfortable carrying it, so the same product needs a different pitch in each market. Before this function existed, North America borrowed designers from Global through an intake queue. Staffing was slow, and the people who joined a project arrived with little context or history with the business.

I spent my first week listening to product leaders and the teams already running projects, then started hiring right away. Both hires were onboarded in under three months. On day one I asked my product and design leaders what success would look like at six months, and by then we’d exceeded it. We’d delivered research that shaped Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) in Canada and Visa’s Visa Payment Passkey A biometric authentication method that replaces passwords and SMS one‑time codes with a secure passkey stored on a cardholder’s device. Users authenticate online payments with their fingerprint, face, or device PIN, for a frictionless checkout experience. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) strategy. I’d also built the machinery that let a new function run inside an established org. I defined our mission and operating model and presented it to the whole product organization at the September all-hands. I set up the budget from scratch, including onboarding suppliers across the US and Canada. With the product leads, I co-designed how their leadership meetings and OKR tracking worked. The brand system we created was adopted across the org’s meetings, Figma workspace, and wiki. Later, a one-page guide on when to bring us in made it easy for any team to start working with us.

Research

Five use cases, one market entry

OutcomeUse case chosen for market entry

Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) hadn’t launched in Canada, and the business wanted to grow adoption. Five use cases were on the table. We were brought in to learn which ones Canadians cared about, who cared most, and why, so the business could size the market and choose what to launch and with which banks. My team wasn’t built out yet, so I hired a research agency, directed it, and managed the budget. It interviewed 28 Canadians in English and French, then surveyed 2,177 across the country.

The most popular concept couldn’t carry a launch on its own. People liked it, but not enough to change how they pay, so we recommended pairing it with another use case. The research also proved our own assumptions wrong about who the recommended use case was for. Its audience was wider than we expected, and that made it the strongest bet for adoption.

We then designed how it would fit into issuers’ key customer platforms. Sales went into bank conversations with research-backed proof points, and banks could see how the product would work inside their existing apps.

            
How Flex would sit inside an issuer’s app, from the home-screen offer to the upgraded card.

Research

A better option than a personal loan

OutcomePositioning used in issuer pitches

This use case started with an idea from the head of the credit business, and the data backed him up before we paid for research. Affluent cardholders carry balances and take out personal loans even though they have premium cards. With him and the North America product owner, I fleshed out solutions in a workshop and we prototyped several enrollment paths for the new concept. Our researcher then surveyed 1,000 affluent US cardholders, with me editing and signing off on the work. One enrollment path clearly won, the survey sharpened who to target, and most people preferred this concept to a personal loan. We turned the findings into issuer pitch narratives with the credit team, and the concept moved forward.

Research

Premium has shifted from status to relief

Scope18 netnography participants, 15 interviews, 400-person follow-up survey

Visa wanted to understand what its most affluent cardholders expect from a premium card. Our research found that what they wanted was relief. They were tired of checking that things actually got done, and they trusted the card that meant they didn’t have to. One participant put it simply: “A credit card that guarantees it’s not going to ruin my trip—that’s worth it.” Four archetypes came out of the work, from someone who wants options without giving up judgment to someone who needs help staying on track.

I designed a full-day workshop for the credit team using the archetypes as lenses, my team led it, and the group voted on which ideas to pursue. Partners said it pushed them past the travel perks they always defaulted to. The strongest concepts went on to a quantitative survey.

Cross-functional workshop with stakeholders ideating new card value propositions — The full-day workshop with the credit team, using the archetypes as lenses.

Illustrated portraits of four archetypes: Malcolm, The Coordinator, in a wood-paneled study; Nadine, The Striver, lacing her sneakers; Daniel, The Optimizer, writing at his desk; and Tara, The Seeker, in a gallery — The four archetypes that came out of the research.

Research

Research that brought partners to the table

Merchants were reluctant to host a new branded cash-access service in their stores, and putting a network’s brand at their front door felt like a concession. I set the research strategy, brought in vendors, and managed the budget, and with our researcher out, I stayed hands-on through a survey of 1,009 debit users and a 26-person diary study. Most in-store cash visits ended in a purchase, and people trusted the brand. That evidence gave the business a stronger case to bring back to merchants. We also found that some of the people who used retail cash access least were the most open to the new offering, which gave the team a new conversation to have with banks.

A second study of 800 people tested the experience itself, measuring trust, fee expectations, and whether people felt they could use it. Trust was high, and many assumed it was only for the brand’s own cardholders, so the branding built trust and a sense of exclusivity at once. Those findings shaped the signage and on-screen guidance.

Visa Payment Passkey A biometric authentication method that replaces passwords and SMS one‑time codes with a secure passkey stored on a cardholder’s device. Users authenticate online payments with their fingerprint, face, or device PIN, for a frictionless checkout experience. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) followed a similar arc. It was an open question whether merchants or issuers should lead enrollment. Our research gave the team an answer to move forward on, and the findings became material to win buy-in from both.

A woman holding a coffee cup inserts a card into an ATM

AI-native practice

Trading the 60-page deck for a living site

Outcome~50% faster studies · 5+ Visa groups using it

When I brought AI into our research practice, the team was nervous, and I made room for them to say so. I told them the thinking was still theirs, then gave them small tasks whose only purpose was to make things. Within months, AI was:

drafting discussion guides straight from research objectives, pulling screener questions from past studies
critiquing each guide for bias, repetition, and gaps
flagging moments worth watching in diary-study video
speeding up synthesis

The biggest change was the readout. Visa research usually ends in a dense 60-page deck. I pushed the team to try new tools and think past the deck, and they built a living site in Replit instead. It added each phase as it finished and let people explore findings by customer archetype. At least five groups across Visa used it, from internal product teams to client-facing ones. Designers in PXD and Global Design started asking how we’d built it.

Playbook

One source of truth for Flex

Adopted byGlobal Design

Each region had been designing Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) on its own. I started a shared playbook and widened its scope beyond North America, and under my direction the team brought the work from North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe into one 62-page playbook covering five use-case families, example flows, and research-backed patterns for enrollment, onboarding, switching payment methods, and setting rules. Global Design adopted it as the shared reference. Building it surfaced bugs and behavior patterns that changed Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) ’s requirements. Alongside it, we gave individual issuers consumer feedback tailored to their own customers. That evidence helped them sign on to Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) ’s debit-to-pay-later option, which counted directly toward the Visa Flex Credential A payment technology that links a single physical or digital card to multiple funding sources, allowing cardholders to switch between debit, credit, installment plans, or reward points at checkout. More on visa.com (opens in a new tab) adoption OKR.

Pages from the Flex product playbook, showing shared research, experience patterns, and insights compiled as a cross-regional source of truth — The Flex playbook, now Global Design’s shared reference.

Leadership

Leading Europe through a transition

I took on Visa’s Europe Design & Research team as it moved to new leadership, with a designer stepping up to director for the first time. We agreed on a clear split early. She led the team day to day, our product partner connected us to the region’s business, and I focused on the quality of the work and its link to Global Design. I coached her and the team, tied their studies more closely to business outcomes, and advocated for more of their time to go to product work. Their research on a European premium card became the starting point for ours in North America.

The team leaned in quickly. People at every level sought out coaching time, the connection between the two regions grew stronger, and nobody left during the transition.