My Plan Manager Redesign — Working with Vanguard’s Design System
Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment firms with over $7.7 trillion in assets, wanted to modernize its Plan Manager site, which had started to show its age.
The previous design suffered from small typography, poor hierarchy, and inconsistent components — making it hard for users to navigate or find information easily.
I joined the cross-functional design team as a Junior UI Designer to help redesign the platform and bring it in line with Vanguard’s new design system, Constellation.
About the Project
Role & Duration
UI Designer · 1.5 Years
Focus
UI Design · Responsive Design · Design System
Domain
Investment Management
Tools
Sketch · Invision · Jira · Confluence · Microsoft tools
Over the course of 1.5 years, I designed 5,000+ responsive screens across three breakpoints (1920px, 1080px, and 320px) to ensure the experience worked seamlessly on any device.
My Role and Process
Working in an Agile environment, I contributed to Wave 3 of the redesign, focusing on responsive web design and design system consistency.
Designed responsive layouts for user stories prioritized by the business team each sprint.
Collaborated daily with developers and the on-site design team to align design intent and technical feasibility.
Led a team of 4 & reviewed peer designs to maintain visual and interaction consistency across breakpoints.
Assisted developers by answering design-related queries during implementation.
Working with Vanguard’s Design System
Using Vanguard’s Constellation design system, I standardized pages by:
01
Applying consistent spacers, dividers, and typography styles.
02
Reducing redundant text styles and aligning everything to design system tokens.
03
Upgrading pages using approved components and patterns from the shared library.
One of the biggest challenges was redesigning large data-heavy tables for smaller screens. This required close collaboration with senior designers and the client’s design system team to explore new patterns and, in some cases, create new components that later became part of the official system.
Quality Assurance
Once designs were ready, I:
01
Shared interactive Invision prototypes with developers and business stakeholders for review and comments.
02
Conducted detailed UI inspections after development and provided visual QA feedback to ensure fidelity to the final designs.
Outcome
The redesigned Plan Manager site delivered a consistent, responsive, and accessible user experience, aligned with Vanguard’s design standards.
Responsive Web Designs for My Plan Manager (MPM)
While I can’t share detailed visuals due to NDA restrictions, this project gave me hands-on experience working within a large-scale design system and taught me how to balance structure, collaboration, and creativity in a corporate setting.