Case Study · Chime · 2024
Chime has tens of millions of daily active members. Despite this scale — or partly because of it — member communications became overwhelming and difficult to consume. As Chime grew, communication became increasingly complex, resulting in messages that were inconsistent, unreliable, and often poor quality.
The goal: create a new Comms Playbook to bring clarity, consistency, and structure to how we design and deliver member communications.
"Inconsistent, unreliable, and often poor quality."
— How members described Chime's communications
I ran discovery in parallel across two tracks to get a complete picture of the problem — internally and externally.
Led sessions with design, marketing, and product teams to surface current processes, identify what was and wasn't working, understand how success was being measured, and gather performance data across surfaces.
Analyzed Chime's own communications alongside competitors to identify effective vs. ineffective patterns, surface redundancies, and pinpoint areas where guidance was weakest.
Discovery converged on five distinct problems that the playbook needed to solve.
Too many competing surfaces with poor definition between them
No stated priority within or across surfaces
No cap on communications per member
Inconsistent language and content standards across teams
Missing guidance on surface performance by use case
To bring order to competing surfaces, I created a ranking system that evaluated each communications surface against seven criteria — enabling teams to confidently assign the right surface to any use case.
This gave every team a shared framework for decision-making rather than relying on tribal knowledge or gut instinct.
| Surface | Urgency | Importance | Actionability | Personalization | Disruption | Persistence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home banner | ||||||
| Inbox | ||||||
| Bottom sheet | ||||||
| Full screen takeover | ||||||
| SMS | ||||||
| Push | ||||||
| Use Case | Recommended Surface(s) | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Low balance alert | PushSMS | Urgent, action needed |
| New feature announcement | Home bannerInboxEmail | Low urgency, persistence needed, needs to be accessed later |
| Full launch announcement | Full screenPushEmail | High importance, disruption |
| Fraud alert | SMSPush | High urgency, persistence needed, needs to be highly actionable |
| Direct deposit arrived | PushEmail | Medium urgency, medium importance |
| Referral bonus offer | Home bannerInboxPush | Low urgency, persistence needed, needs to be accessed later |
| Recurring transfer failed | InboxEmail | Low–medium importance, medium actionability, compliance consideration |
A core deliverable of the playbook was a taxonomy for all member communications — four types that gave every team a shared vocabulary.
Account-specific information and service availability details that members need to know.
Necessary actions to avoid negative financial consequences or restore full functionality.
Information about new or updated products, services, or opportunities available to members.
Optional suggested actions that offer additional value to members who want to get more from Chime.
A previous iteration of this project failed — and understanding why shaped how we approached this one. The lesson was hard-won: a project that impacts every team at the company is anything but straightforward.
Success required three things that had been missing before:
"There's no way around it — a project that impacts every team at the company is anything but straightforward."
— Key project learning
The Comms Playbook shipped as a comprehensive system spanning multiple workstreams.
Component specifications, content guidelines, tone of voice standards, implementation guides, templates, and usage examples — all in one place.
A bespoke AI tool trained on the playbook to give teams real-time guidance when creating communications.
A plugin that surfaces playbook guidance directly inside Figma, meeting designers where they already work.
We defined three metrics to track the playbook's impact over time.
Consumption of playbook resources and participation in design reviews
Recurring member interviews and surveys measuring surface effectiveness
Comms-focused member NPS surveys tracking overall satisfaction with Chime's communications
System-level design is hard to get right — but when it works, the impact is visible everywhere. This was a challenging, but really satisfying project to lead.