Context
Movistar Mexico needed to evolve the experience of its digital channel to support a complex catalog of plans, devices, and promotions, while maintaining clarity for end users and consistency with the brand.
The main challenge was not only visual, but structural: reducing cognitive friction during plan exploration and enabling better decision-making in an environment traditionally overloaded with technical information.
Problem
The eCommerce platform presented several friction points:
- Unclear visual hierarchy between plans, prices, and benefits.
- Information overload in key views.
- Inconsistencies across sections and navigation states.
- A purchase flow perceived as long and unpredictable.
These factors negatively impacted user trust and the efficiency of the conversion funnel.
Design objectives
The project addressed the challenge of simplifying a complex, information-dense purchasing experience into one that was easier to understand, compare, and trust. Multiple plans, devices, and promotions competed for user attention, generating cognitive overload and uncertainty. The objective was to improve clarity and information hierarchy while optimizing the purchase flow, without sacrificing transparency or alignment with Movistar’s brand values.
Role and team
I was UX Lead at Onikom Systems, the agency that served Movistar MX, from March 2018 to August 2019. I joined Onikom with this project, which ran until February 2019. One of my key decisions there was to build a UX team that could serve several clients and products at once instead of one designer per account.
On Movistar, the UX team was three people: a UI designer, a UX designer and me. I joined client discovery and brought users' needs and problems back to the team to turn them into product. Together, we ran a heuristic evaluation to find the main friction points, redefined the information architecture, designed the core flows and wireframes, and turned them into a UI system validated with interactive prototypes, working closely with developers and Movistar's stakeholders.
Key decisions
- Value before specs. We surfaced each plan's key benefits first and moved technical detail one level down.
- Plans side by side. Plans were designed for visual comparison, so choosing didn't depend on memory.
- Visible progress. Clear selection and progress states told people where they were and what was left.
- Reusable components. A component set with defined interaction states balanced Movistar's brand with usability and gave future iterations a base.
We validated comprehension and hierarchy with interactive prototypes before development, which surfaced risks while they were still cheap to fix.
Results
We didn't run a formal before-and-after study. Feedback came from Movistar's marketing and CX reports after each release; we tested in production and adjusted the design based on what those reports showed. What we aimed for, and validated in prototypes, was:
- Plans that are easier to compare.
- A purchase flow that feels shorter and more predictable.
- A visual system the client could keep building on.
Key learnings
- In telecommunications, clarity outperforms persuasion.
- Showing less at once leads to better decisions.
- Visual consistency reduces cognitive friction.
- A good UI does not mask structural problems; it exposes and solves them.
