03. Action Plan: Open the gap with prototypes, close it with real users đ
The first challenge wasnât about design; it was about organizational empathy. The Brazilian team operated from the perspective of their own market, with legitimate but pronounced biases about what should be obvious to any user. Before I could design anything, I needed to build a bridge.
The first tool I built was a benchmark, but not a static comparison table. I documented the complete workflows of the main payment platforms in Mexico, traditional banks, and neobanks like Mercado Pago, which turned out to be our most direct competitor.
I captured not only the happy paths but also empty states, corner cases, and error screens. I built flowcharts broken down by key moments, with usability evaluations for each feature.
This dashboard became more than a research artifact: it was a living tool. I also incorporated the flow we would launch in Mexico, with comparative documentation of key assets and how we would stack up against the competition at launch. Development, marketing, product, and data teams began using it as their source of truth. The local team in Mexico began feeding it with new screenshots. People who werenât part of the Payments Assistant team felt compelled to take care of it. That ownership wasnât planned; it came from making the invisible visible.
The second focus was direct contact with Mexican users. I actively participated both in developing the protocols with the research team and in defining the two prototypes to be tested: a lightweight version of Payments Assistant and a more feature-rich version, similar to the Brazilian experience. What interested me wasnât just finding out what made the interface difficult for them to use; I wanted to understand their habits around paying for services, what motivated them, and what held them back.
The results were striking. Users were perplexed by the complex version: they didnât know how to proceed, the actions werenât familiar, and there were too many decisions to make at once. The streamlined version was much easier for them to grasp. More importantly, what users valued above all else was the autonomy to decide what to pay and the reminder of their payment obligations. They didnât want automation; they wanted agency with support.
