Taking over a global brief mid-flight and getting it across the line.
The Brief
Mastercard needed a new app designed for international travellers allowing them to locate ATMs and make cardless cash withdrawals in their local currency, anywhere in the world.
My Role
I inherited this project two weeks before the final client presentation. The previous lead had left, I was new to the agency, and I had to get up to speed on a complex brief fast. I took over the designs, assessed what was needed to get them to presentation standard, and delivered. The project was approved by the client and went into development.
The Challenge
It wasn’t the complexity of the brief that made this hard, it was the context. Coming in cold, with no handover, on a tight timeline, for a global client. The ability to orient quickly, make confident design decisions under pressure, and present work you’ve only recently inherited takes a particular kind of composure.
Outcome The app was approved, built, and launched. It has since grown into the Mastercard Nearby app, a globally deployed product giving users real-time access to over two million ATMs and participating merchants across more than 200 countries. It’s one of those projects where the scale of what it became is bigger than anything you could have imagined in that two-week sprint.
