Silvia Casagrande
IT Governance Suite
/25
The Problem
The IT department of an international insurance group launched a project to modernize its internal tools and technologies. The project spanned 16 different strands and involved more than 10 countries. Most of the strands, led by various stakeholders, focused on reorganizing existing platforms based on various technologies, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Power BI and ServiceNow, as well as bespoke platforms, each with different requirements, functionalities and visualization types, aimed at project managers, portfolio managers and program managers, as well as all other employees. The streams involving the creation of a new platform or user interface therefore required design work, both in terms of user experience and the brand’s visual identity.
Constraints & Design Strategy
None of the platforms allowed much control over how they rendered, and ServiceNow was the tightest: the client ran the out-of-the-box version, so anything requiring customization was off the table. The set was not homogeneous in kind either. Five were reporting surfaces; the access-request tool was a transactional flow with its own interaction logic. Coherence had to be carried by the only things present everywhere, color and the consistency of the visual language.
Execution & Key Decisions
Theme as Configuration, Not Customisation: Built a brand palette and UI through the ServiceNow Theme Builder plugin, applied platform-wide, deliberately inside the configuration layer so it would survive upgrades.
Form Design Inside Platform Logic: Ran sessions with the developers and project stakeholders to learn how the process actually worked and how ServiceNow handles it per role.
Reporting Redesigns Where the Stack Allowed More: On SAC project monitoring, introduced data that existed but was never displayed, gave sections names and space, exposed legends and toggles, and added a navigation bar across reports for future scalability. On the Power BI report, removed a menu page that duplicated the header, moved filters into a labelled left panel, and reworked chart colors for contrast.
Structured UX and Accessibility Review: Expert review of the access-request portal across six areas against WCAG 2.2 AA, producing five findings ordered by how much each blocked the core task rather than how visible it was, each scoped to be adoptable independently of the others, plus a pattern specification, a delivery sequence and a validation plan.
Ways of Working: Agile with incremental releases across streams. I facilitated daily stand-ups with the key functions and weekly or bi-weekly alignment sessions, and design was validated with Business, Architecture and internal Ergonomics teams before development. The validation process itself was refined across PMO, Design and Development as the program ran.
Impact
All six products released, reaching the countries where the group operates.
The theme outlasted the project: because it was built as configuration rather than customization, it could be lifted onto other ServiceNow platforms, and the country teams picked it up for their own local tools.
Full process notes & deep-dive wireframes available on Notion