Role-based Team Updates
My Team | Suncentral | Sun Life Financial
USERS
Advisors, Assistants, Back Office Users.
TIMELINE
10+ Months.
ROLE
Lead UX & Sole Designer.
CHALLENGE
Transform a 5-day manual workflow into a real-time
self-service tool.
IMPACT
Real-time updates, reduced support dependency and increased trust.
TEAM
Product Manager, Engineering Team, UX Designer (me).
First, let me tell you about "My Team", a role-based team updates tool
"My Team" is a role-based feature in Suncentral that provides advisors and their staff real-time visibility into business access. It enables independent management of team structures and permissions, serving as a comprehensive hub for delegated access management.
Overview
I led the 0 -1 design of Sun Life’s first self-serve, role-based team ecosystem.
As the UX Lead, I digitized this high-touch process into an intuitive interface that manages complex business rules. By replacing a multi-day manual workflow with a real-time digital solution, I empowered advisors to manage their own teams independently, significantly reducing support costs and improving organizational agility.
Why are we doing this?
The "My Team" initiative was a strategic move to modernize Sun Life's operational model and improve the advisor experience. We moved forward with this project to:
Enable Operational Agility
Transition toward a real-time service model that allows for instantaneous updates rather than multi-day delays.
Drive Digital Transformation
Shift from a high-touch, human-dependent workflow to a modern, scalable digital ecosystem.
Scale Advisor Autonomy
Empower users with self-serve capabilities, allowing them to manage their own business structures without professional intervention.
BEFORE
Manual Process
Up to 5 days
User needs an update
Calls Help Desk
Help Desk creates a ticket
Ticket is processed
Multi-day wait (up to 5 days)
Update completed
AFTER
Self-served Process
Real-time
User goes to My Team
Updates permissions and/or team information
Changes are applied instantly
Real-time updates and visibility
Key challenges
Static Component Library
The design library consisted only of plain, static components with zero dynamic elements, making it difficult to build a real-time interactive experience for advisors.
Accuracy & Trust Barriers
Handling sensitive delegated access required absolute clarity to ensure users felt confident managing permissions without support.
Architectural Complexity
Designing Sun Life’s first role-based experience with three distinct, "intertwined" flows for Advisors, Assistants, and Back-office staff.
Translating Business Logic
Successfully converting complex, legacy business rules into an intuitive and reliable digital interface.
Our goals
User Empowerment: Give advisors full control to independently manage team structures and permissions in real time.
Digitize Manual Processes: Replace help-desk-dependent workflows with an intuitive self-serve interface.
Operational Efficiency: Significantly lower organizational support costs by eliminating the need for manual intervention.
Scalable Collaboration: Establish a foundational, reusable role-based pattern for future platform features.
Taking a deep dive
To drive this transformation, I aligned with stakeholders to define how role-based updates would improve communication across user groups. I reviewed existing manual approaches to understand how information was currently structured and delivered across the organization.
I conducted user testing sessions and created a comprehensive demo to validate the experience, which was critical for aligning stakeholders on the direction of this novel self-service capability. This ensured the final solution was both understandable and usable in a real-world practice.
The Strategy: Role-Based Architecture
I established three core personas, Advisors, Assistants, and Back-office users; each with distinct responsibilities and permissions. I mapped how these roles interacted with one another on both a front-end and back-end basis, ensuring that role-specific information remained tailored and relevant.
By defining how different user groups influenced each other's access and visibility, I built a system that maintained high clarity while supporting multiple interconnected roles.
Design Process
To ensure the digital experience matched complex business requirements, I worked in close proximity with the lead engineer to deeply understand the back-end flows for each specific role. This collaborative phase was essential for accurately translating technical back-end logic into an intuitive front-end experience.
To overcome the limitations of the static design library, I worked in close collaboration with the UI developer to build the necessary dynamic components. By leveraging React, we were able to accomplish the specific component behaviour required for a real-time, role-based experience. This partnership ensured the system could handle complex role-based content delivery seamlessly across technical and user layers.
Roadblocks & Challenges
This project required transforming a high-touch process, previously managed exclusively by Sun Life's help desk, into a user-friendly digital experience. I had to ensure advisors felt empowered to handle sensitive team data independently without compromising security.
Intuitive Translation of Complexity
Creating a user-friendly and easy-to-learn flow for an intricate enterprise process that was formerly managed by internal specialists.
Intertwined Role Dynamics
Ensuring the three distinct flows for Advisors, Assistants, and Back-office staff were connected and functioned correctly together.
Designing for Absolute Trust
Maintaining data integrity and providing total clarity on permissions to ensure users felt confident managing delegated access without support.
Let’s design
The final "My Team" experience provides tailored functionality for each persona, ensuring security through precise role-based access control. Key design implementations included:
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Advisor View (Full Control): Advisors have total visibility over their team structure, allowing them to manage permissions and add or remove members in real time.
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Advisor-Only Actions: Dedicated modals for adding team members and editing access ensure that only advisors can grant access to their business structures and codes.
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Assistant View (Visibility & Membership): Assistants can view the codes they have access to, request additional permissions, and manage their participation by leaving advisor groups as needed.
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Back-office View (Branch-Specific): Experience is constrained by branch-level permissions, allowing users to view only the specific branches they are assigned to within the organization.
By collaborating with the UI developer to build dynamic React components, I was able to translate complex role-based logic into a seamless experience that reduced friction at scale.
Click images to enlarge and view additional details.
The Impact & Key Takeaways
This project delivered Sun Life’s first company-wide role-based experience, proving that centralized systems can simplify complex workflows when designed around user needs. What I’m most proud of is how this work:
Modernizes Technical Standards
Bridged gaps in the design library by building custom React components that support dynamic, real-time role-based interactions.
Accelerates Delivery & Operational Efficiency
Successfully shifted update timelines from 5 days to real-time, significantly reducing dependency on internal help desk channels.
Ensures Scalable Precision & Trust
Strengthened user confidence in managing sensitive permissions through a clear information hierarchy and verified role responsibilities.
Drives Enterprise Interest
Established a foundational collaboration pattern so successful that other internal Sun Life teams are now seeking to reuse this experience for their own platforms.