Vanco Payments

Case Study: Unifying UI and Accelerating Product Strategy at Vanco

Overview

• Role: Senior Product Designer

• Project Type: UX Strategy, Design System, Donation App Launch

• Client: Vanco (Payment Solutions for Faith-Based & Educational Orgs)

• Duration: 1 year, 7 months

• Team: 1 Senior Product Designer (you), Product Managers, Engineers, Stakeholders

The Challenge

Vanco—a leading provider of digital payments for churches, schools, and nonprofits—operated a product suite of over 40 applications, each designed in silos with inconsistent UI libraries, duplicated patterns, and misaligned user experiences.

Stakeholders were facing:

• Frustrated end-users across tools (donation, tuition, and event apps)

• Design and dev inefficiencies from duplicated components

• Fragmented brand identity across their ecosystem

Meanwhile, Vanco was launching a new donation app, a flagship product critical to recurring giving. But with no centralized UX methodology or design system in place, scale and cohesion were at risk.

Goals

• Consolidate five disconnected UI libraries into one scalable design system

• Create a unified identity across Vanco’s digital products

• Streamline product development and improve usability across platforms

• Support the successful launch of the new donation app with UX strategy

Research & Insights

Methods Used:

• Stakeholder interviews and UX audits

• Heuristic evaluations of existing product flows

• Competitive benchmarking in the faith-based giving space

• User interviews integrated into early feature planning

Findings:

• Each Vanco product was designed in isolation, causing friction for users navigating between tools

• Design and dev teams spent excessive time recreating UI patterns

• Stakeholders lacked a shared vision of what “good UX” looked like

• Users wanted a more seamless, modern experience across platforms

Design Process

1. Implementing UX Strategy

• Led discovery sessions to document current-state journeys

• Introduced object-oriented UX principles to modularize design thinking

• Created design artifacts to guide teams from abstract idea to polished UI

2. Building the Design System

• Audited 5 separate UI libraries

• Consolidated and refactored into a single, scalable design system

• Created token-based architecture to allow easy branding tweaks

• Established documentation and governance models to ensure adoption

3. Driving App Launch Success

• Supported cross-functional teams in launching the new donation app

• Developed high-fidelity flows and interactive prototypes

• Applied research insights to ensure donor confidence, simplicity, and trust

• Iterated flows based on usability feedback

Impact & Outcomes

Design Highlights

• Scalable Design System: Reduced visual and UX inconsistency by unifying disparate UI sources

• Strategic UX Integration: Brought design into earlier stages of product decision-making

• Modular Framework: Object-oriented patterns created design flexibility across product lines

• UX Ops Maturity: Introduced standards, best practices, and tools that scaled across teams

Reflection

Working at Vanco reinforced how design systems are more than visual toolkits—they are a strategic infrastructure for scaling great UX. By uniting 40+ products under one coherent system and helping launch a purpose-built donation app, I helped transform scattered design into a unified experience aligned with user and business goals.

Biggest Lesson:

“Strong systems beat strong intentions. Design cohesion drives user trust and internal efficiency.”

Next Steps

• Scale the design system to include accessibility audits and motion guidelines

• Add usage analytics to identify gaps in adoption

• Expand UX research practice to continuously improve Vanco's product ecosystem