Peter Uzzi
Product + Design Leader
Redesigning an iconic consumer credit tool
The birth of Credit Compass™
TransUnion set out to redesign and enhance its popular Credit Score Simulator product. Originally a data service for third-party partners, the goal was to transform it into a user-friendly, branded tool for TransUnion’s consumer products. This new offering aimed to provide greater value to B2B2C partners while driving growth and differentiating TransUnion in the DTC market.
Role: Design Lead
Contributions: Product Strategy, Architectural design, Visual design, prototyping, Executive Storytelling
Team: Senior Product Designer, UX Researcher, Business Analyst, Product Manager, Engineering team
Timeline: 3 months
Milestones: Discovery, Vision concepts, UX Research, Design, Pilot launch, Quantitative and Qualitative testing, Design, GA launch
The legacy Simulator was a calculator composed of complicated financial inputs and outputs that was not intuitive for our partners or their customers.
We ideated less complicated mental models that were more emotionally resonant, and tested them.
The Challenge
Due to legal and regulatory hurdles, redesigning the legacy Credit Score Simulator had long been delayed. Partners found it too technical and hard to use, prompting executive leadership to task my team with a full overhaul. Our challenge: integrate new partner scoring data, simplify the legacy calculator, and deliver a more intuitive, engaging experience for consumers on TransUnion’s DTC platform.
Scores of new partner data needed to be added to our model. I helped design a translation layer for our legacy system to parse the data and build front-end templates that enhanced the user experience.
By reducing inputs and testing new interaction models with users, we landed on a design that users embraced, driven by behavioral triggers that drove content contextually and reduced cognitive load.
Solution and Impact
I partnered with UX researchers, compliance teams, and external partners to test and validate new concepts. We found that the legacy credit simulator was overwhelming—cluttered with promotional content that confused users. Insights showed users valued actionable guidance over sales messaging, so I led a product strategy that prioritized education and value first, with promotions presented later in the user flow.
Working with engineering architects, I designed an ingestion and translation layer to integrate new partner data into our backend model. We restructured the UX to rely on fewer behavior-based triggers, reducing friction and cognitive load while improving speed and clarity. This shift improved the accuracy of scoring, made regulatory and educational content easier to digest, and helped users take meaningful action, boosting engagement. The redesigned and rebranded tool, Credit Compass™, better reflected the consumer’s journey by gamifying the credit improvement experience, letting users set credit score goals and receive personalized action plans.
