FinTech
2025
From Uncertainty to Confidence: American Express Trip Cancel Guard
I owned the full design process end-to-end — from running user research and synthesizing insights, through wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing, to final hi-fi delivery and engineering handoff. The PM defined business scope and success metrics. I defined the experience strategy and all interaction decisions. Legal and compliance review was iterative throughout, not a gate at the end.
Research
What I learned before designing anything
Before touching Figma, I ran a four-week discovery sprint to understand why the existing TCG product underperformed. The core finding wasn't what we expected — it wasn't primarily a pricing problem. It was a trust and comprehension problem.
"The coverage page felt like a legal document. I couldn't figure out what I was actually getting — so I just didn't buy it. Wasn't worth the risk."
Complexity killed intent.
Users who reached the coverage breakdown page had a 62% higher drop-off rate than those who saw the simplified summary.
Price uncertainty stalled decisions.
Without a quote up front, users deferred. The "I'll look into it later" pattern was universal — and permanent.
Problem area
Buy-now-or-never protection chaos
The original TCG product had a fundamental structural problem: it could only be purchased at the exact moment of booking standalone flights through AmexTravel.com. No post-booking additions. No third-party bookings. No packages. The tight constraints made it functionally irrelevant to most cardholders' real travel behavior.
Product before redesign
No pricing transparency before commitment
Users were asked to decide on a product without knowing its price until deep into a purchase flow. Insurance decisions require cost information upfront — every user session confirmed this.
Only Amex-portal bookings qualified
The majority of Amex cardholders book flights directly with airlines or through third-party sites. The portal restriction locked out most of the eligible audience before they even started.
Design goals
What I aimed to achieve
Build confidence through transparency
Show price and coverage before asking for commitment. Reduce the cognitive friction that was causing users to defer — and never return.
Design decision 01
Focusing on what travelers actually care about
Research showed cardholders want simple, flexible protection — not a feature list. The redesign let cardmembers add coverage after booking flights anywhere (not just the Amex portal), with clear 75% reimbursement for any reason up to 2 days before departure.
This was a direct trade-off: prioritizing real-world flexibility over the legacy restriction. The product team carried the business case for expanding the purchase window; my job was to make the expanded access feel natural and trustworthy — not a workaround.
Top Benefit Highlights
Flexible addition window
Add protection even after booking
Any-reason coverage
Cancel up to 2 days before departure
Clear reimbursement
Up to 75% of non-refundable costs
Exclusive AMEX perk
Available only to cardholders
Design decision 02
Building trust through a preview & quick quote mode
Many cardholders hesitate because they don't know the cost before starting a purchase flow. Rather than pushing for immediate commitment, I introduced a Preview & Quick Quote Mode — an instant personalized quote generated before any login or purchase intent is required.
1. Quick Quote generator
It reassures cardmembers by letting them see exact pricing and coverage instantly without any risk or login pressure.
Design decision 03
Turning the final step into a confident confirmation
The original checkout page treated every logged-in cardholder as a stranger. The redesign started with one principle: don't ask for what Amex already knows. For a logged-in Gold cardholder, that meant arriving at checkout with name, DOB, flight details, address, email, and billing card already populated — ready to review, not re-enter.
This was a direct trade-off: defaulting fields to blank for compliance safety versus surfacing pre-filled data from the cardholder's profile. The payments team confirmed card-on-file could be surfaced without re-authentication under a defined threshold. My job was to make that feel like recognition, not assumption.
Purchase Journey After Login
What the cardholder sees on arrival
Trip details pre-populated
Flight departure date, ticket purchase date, and destination pulled directly from their booking — no re-entry required.
Card on file, ready to charge
Billing card and address surface automatically. One less decision at the highest-stakes moment.
Traveler identity confirmed, not re-entered
Name and date of birth of primary card holder arrive pre-filled from the cardholder profile — editable if traveling on behalf of someone else.
Security code as an intentional gate
A deliberate, non-negotiable signal that the cardholder is present and authorizing — retained from the payments security team's requirements.
Constraints Navigated
The real-world friction that shaped every decision
Design at American Express doesn't happen in a vacuum. Working within a large financial institution meant navigating a set of constraints that shaped the solution as much as user research did. These weren't obstacles — they were part of the design problem.
Brand / Accessibility → WCAG AA required across all interactive elements
Clear, transparent explanations helped reduce uncertainty around coverage and outcomes. While overall purchase CVR was 1.3%, strong engagement signals (12+ min avg. time spent, 0.13% error rate) indicated users were actively evaluating the product with higher confidence. Resolution— Worked with the brand team to identify an approved darker blue variant (#1a4fa0) that passed AA at all sizes. Documented the accessible palette as a reusable token for the design system.
Retrospective
Designing for trust and confident decisions
Before and After redesign
Impact
Clarity That Converts
High-intent traffic (~18.7K visits month one) with strong signal that users were actively evaluating coverage value before committing — the 20.5% estimate-to-continue rate validates the Quick Quote approach.
Accessibility Compliance
All 14 interactive components passed WCAG 2.1 AA. Accessible blue token (#1a4fa0) adopted by 3 other product squads after I shared the documentation — a small design system contribution from a single project.
Reflection
What I'd do differently — and what I'd prioritize next
Shipping something doesn't mean it's finished. The post-launch data points to a few clear gaps in the current experience — and with hindsight, one thing I'd have invested in earlier.
Would do differently — Earlier usability testing on the quote tool entry
The 20.5% estimate-to-continue rate is good, but I'd want it higher. In retrospect, I tested the quote results experience thoroughly — but under-tested the entry form (trip details input). If I ran this again, I'd run a dedicated study on that form alone, 3 weeks earlier in the process.
Would do differently — Baseline metric documentation from the start
I didn't push hard enough early on to get baseline data from the original product. When the 1.3% CVR question came up post-launch, I had engagement signals to contextualize it — but a clear baseline would have made the improvement story much more compelling.
If I had more time - A return-visit nurture pattern
14% of users returned to the TCG experience after their first visit. That's a meaningful signal of deferred decision-making — and there's currently nothing in the experience designed for returning users. A dedicated "you got a quote before" recognition state would likely move the estimate-to-continue rate significantly.
