Case Study
Nationwide asked for one thing: give the Territory Managers a better user experience inside Salesforce. The Personal Lines app they work in had sat untouched for more than ten years and was built to serve about 45 roles at once, so it served none of them well. I was hired as Lead UX Designer on a contract from April to October 2026 to investigate, and I delivered the findings, redesigned Home and Accounts pages the managers themselves reacted to, and three implementation options for leadership to choose from.
The redesigned TM Home Page. The numbers pay depends on sit at the top, agencies are ranked by days since last visit, and open opportunities carry a reason and a next touch date instead of a count nobody trusts.
The Problem
The complaints were never about looks. Territory Managers are the link between Nationwide and the independent agencies that sell its policies, and they were barely using the tool they were given. Of everything on the Home Page, they used three items. On the Accounts Page they used one or two, above all the visit notes, because notes are what prove to leadership that a meeting with an agency happened. The product owners had never worked with a UX designer and did not know what to ask for, so the UX team brought me in to find out what was actually wrong.
The Home Page as the managers found it. Full size cards holding no data, charts that only read on hover, and almost nothing a Territory Manager opens in a day.
Tasks, chatter, events, and opportunity charts sat untouched. Some cards rendered as full size boxes containing nothing but a link, and one manager asked why he had a massive square with nothing in it.
Calendars and reminders live in Outlook. Notes live in OneNote, because Salesforce notes cannot be searched. Every performance number that pay depends on lives in outside reports and a hand built spreadsheet. Salesforce held only what was required.
The stagnant opportunities count could only be cleared by moving an agency into Discovery, whether anything had been discovered or not. Managers cleared it to get off the list, and leadership read the result as real progress.
Research
The product owners provided no participants and few answers, so I found the people myself, emailing the contacts others suggested until I reached working Territory Managers. Access ran on their schedule, Mondays and Fridays only, because the rest of the week belongs to the agencies. I ran 7 interviews, then brought early concepts back to the same managers for follow ups on both the Home Page and the Accounts Page redesigns, so the people who described the problems judged the answers.
Video interview with a field Territory Manager, walking the Home Page he actually uses.
Finding. Managers demoed their real process instead of describing it. The day starts in Outlook, not Salesforce, and one manager said it plainly: I only do Salesforce because they make me do Salesforce.
Decision. Design for the day managers actually have, not the day the tool imagines for them.
A Territory Manager on a video call, sharing the territory spreadsheet he built and maintains himself.
Finding. Percent to plan, the number pay depends on, lived in a hand built Excel tracker that a manager maintained himself, because Salesforce never showed it to him.
Decision. Those metrics became the top row of the redesigned Home Page, with percent to plan as the headline figure.
The current Accounts Page for one agency: production, reports, and profile data packed into a single screen.
Finding. The Accounts Page packs production, reports, activity, links, and contacts into one dense screen, and its profile data sits stale for years, so managers re interview agencies instead of trusting the record. Only the notes earn real use.
Decision. The Accounts Page got the same treatment as Home: redesign directions built from the findings, ready for managers to judge.
Key Moves
Move One
Every card on the redesigned Home Page answers something a manager asked for. The pay metrics sit at the top: weekly binds, new business and total PIF against plan, and visits for the month and the quarter. An Agency Visit Tracker ranks agencies by days since last visit, so no relationship quietly goes six months unseen. Open opportunities carry a status, a reason for any hold, and a next touch date. Agencies not visited in 90 days, and visits logged without notes, surface on their own.
Finding: the old stagnant count answered how many and nothing else, not which agency, why it stalled, or when it would be handled. Decision: replace the count with a reason and a return date, set without leaving the Home Page.
Move Two
Helping the managers meant changing a Salesforce interface shared by about 45 roles, and leadership worried about cost and disruption. So instead of one proposal, I gave them three implementation options. A separate Lightning app built for Territory Managers, where everything on the page is what they look for. The same page, with cards shown or hidden by role, so each role sees its own view. Or one unified page where each role opens its own section from a dropdown. Three scopes, three costs, one goal: a simpler, role relevant experience.
Finding: the objection was never the design, it was the scope of changing a shared platform. Decision: price the change three ways and let leadership choose the scope.
Move Three
The Accounts Page got two redesign directions. Option A, on top, keeps the familiar structure and moves the information managers use to the front, the lighter build with less disruption. Option B, below, rebuilds the page as clean performance cards that scan faster. To settle the direction, I proposed a short preference survey to every Territory Manager, run with the product owners. And I added a quick win that needs no rebuild at all: a TM Daily View dashboard, built from existing Salesforce capability, that pilots the same content while the bigger decision waits.
Finding: managers reach the Accounts Page by search and use almost none of it, above all the notes. Decision: design both directions, let manager preference and build fit decide, and offer a pilot that can start now.
The Bigger Answer
The redesign had a catch. A new Home Page only helps if managers can learn it, and Nationwide training does not work that way today. Training is a long track of live sessions, one to ones, practicals, and job shadowing, spread across pages of schedule, and the meetings are not recorded. A manager who misses a teaching, or wants to hear it again, has no way back to it. The managers said so themselves, in the same interviews that shaped the Salesforce work.
What Territory Managers said about learning today: no clear path, too much volume, and material that takes too long to work through in the moment.
So the work grew a second half. I designed a Learning Hub that gives every role one login and routes each person to the learning app built for their work, with the shared tools in one place: a knowledge base, recorded meetings, support, and announcements. Meetings become recordings a manager can replay. Answers live in a knowledge base that can be searched, instead of a session that happened once and is gone.
The Learning Hub. One login, and each role opens the learning app built for its work.
Inside the Territory Manager learning app: a start here path, progress and testing status, recorded meetings to return to, and the next recommended step.
It answers the same fragmentation the research found everywhere else in a manager day, scattered across tools that never connect. The hub gives training the same treatment the Home Page got: organized around the role, in one place, and worth opening.
The tools a Territory Manager day is scattered across today: Outlook, OneNote, Teams, and AI search.
Challenges
The product owners had never spoken with a UX designer, so the work began with a presentation on what UX does and what it could find. Permission to interview managers took four months of a six month contract.
The product owners provided no participants and few answers. I investigated on my own, emailing the people others suggested, until I found the managers, the data owners, and the answers.
An honest case on cost meant showing the whole picture, including the training managers receive today, which would need redesigning alongside the new direction. Leadership deserved the full scope, not just the screens.
In the end, this contract was a what would it look like venture. The deliverable was proof: the problem, the evidence, and the options, solid enough for leadership to budget against.
Outcome
Nationwide asked for a better user experience for its Territory Managers. What they got was the full picture: what managers actually do all day, the problems every interview agreed on, redesigned Home and Accounts pages the managers had already reacted to, three implementation options at three levels of cost, a survey plan to settle the final direction, and a dashboard pilot that can start without a rebuild. They were very happy with the findings, and the build decision now sits with a 2027 budget. I am not claiming launch results for work that has not been built yet. The claim is the evidence and the options, delivered inside a six month contract that began with four months of waiting for permission to start.