SURA
I designed the complete experience of a regional platform for Seguros SURA that centralised transformation initiative management across 6 Latin American countries — moving from scattered, informal coordination to a collaborative model with defined roles, validated in pilot and taken to implementation.
Six subsidiaries within SURA's Mobility Capability coordinated transformation initiatives 100% informally — by email, personal contacts and tacit knowledge, with no defined roles or traceability.
Design a regional platform that centralised knowledge and coordination across the 6 subsidiaries, integrated into the already-deployed Microsoft ecosystem — without adding yet another parallel system.
Discovery across 6 countries, a role architecture (Curator · Facilitator · Inventor) inspired by Galbraith's model, and a regional initiative feed validated in a pilot with a real case.
A collaborative model with defined roles, publicly backed by 3 SURA directors and taken to implementation after the pilot.
Seguros SURA's Mobility Capability brought together teams across 6 countries developing business transformation initiatives. Yet all that work existed in silos: each subsidiary operated independently, with no visibility into what the others were doing, no shared structure to classify or manage initiatives, and no official channel to transfer knowledge across regions.
The outcome was predictable: to find out who was working on a similar problem, a professional had to "knock on five doors before anyone tells you who can actually help." Knowledge generated by one subsidiary was invisible to the others. Teams duplicated efforts without knowing it. Strategic leaders couldn't connect local initiatives to regional goals. Cross-country collaboration depended on personal relationships, not on processes.
In 2021, SURA was projecting 2.6 million new clients through its digital strategy. A fragmented innovation capability can't scale. Investment in transformation initiatives was scattering without traceability, and execution speed depended on who you knew.
- 5-month design and validation cycle with staggered deliverables per stage
- Solo UX/UI working with remote teams distributed across 6 countries and time zones
- Key stakeholders: business directors and sub-managers from each Latin American subsidiary + IT team with mandatory Microsoft ecosystem
- The platform couldn't replace existing tools — it had to integrate with already-deployed SharePoint and Teams. No historical usage data to establish a quantitative baseline.
Seguros SURA's Mobility Capability professionals need to manage and share regional transformation initiatives within a centralised digital ecosystem that unifies knowledge, roles and progress — instead of relying on informal channels and personal contacts to coordinate work across countries.
No unified system existed. Each initiative lived in emails, scattered documents, informal conversations or in one specific person's tacit knowledge.
I ran discovery sessions with stakeholders from all 6 subsidiaries, complemented by benchmarking internal tools and journey mapping by role. Findings converged on two structural problems: the absence of governance (no one knew what initiatives existed or in what state) and the invisibility of generated knowledge (what one subsidiary learned never reached the others systematically). Sessions also revealed that initiatives had two distinct natures — continuous improvement and business transformation — with different management dynamics. This distinction became the backbone of the platform's information architecture.
| Finding | Design implication |
|---|---|
| 100% informal coordination between subsidiaries | Regional initiative feed visible to everyone |
| No formally defined roles within the process | Role architecture as a prerequisite to interface design |
| Knowledge trapped in people, not systems | Knowledge management space with initiative histories |
| Microsoft tools already deployed | Integration with existing ecosystem instead of a standalone platform |
| Teams at different maturity levels | Role-based onboarding and progressive process guides |
Built from real behaviour patterns observed in discovery interviews with all 6 subsidiaries — not from assumptions.
Curador / Curadora
360° view of the regional portfolio. Weekly tracking of multiple initiatives; leadership reporting. Bridges strategy and operations.
See the status of all capability initiatives, connect teams across subsidiaries, identify synergies and strategic alignment.
Facilitador / Facilitadora
Oversees the day-to-day process of an active initiative. Daily use during execution. Ensures the team follows methodological steps and commitments are met.
Log progress, coordinate activities, manage team member participation.
Inventor / Inventora
Contributes knowledge and creativity to initiatives in progress. Sporadic use when active in an initiative. Base role — anyone in the organisation can hold it, regardless of hierarchy.
Know what's expected of them, see the impact of their contribution, receive recognition for it.
Multi-subsidiary discovery — 6 countries, same root problems
Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Panama and El Salvador + benchmarking of internal tools + customer journey maps. Key decision: don't assume all 6 subsidiaries had the same needs — discovery revealed real but manageable differences. The underlying problems were identical (invisibility, disconnection, lack of structure), only at different maturity levels.
Work model and role architecture
I designed a collaborative work model based on Jay R. Galbraith's model, adapted to SURA's context: three roles (Curator, Facilitator, Inventor) with clear definitions of responsibilities, skills and their relationship to the initiative process. Key decision: without clear role identity, the platform wouldn't get adoption. The finding was that these roles already existed informally in the organisation — naming and formalising them was the first act of ownership.
Experience design and prototyping — gallery, gamification, regional feed
I designed three differentiated flows (one per role): social-feed-style regional initiative feed, a project gallery with an art gallery metaphor (emerging from interviews: "see what others do and feel your work matters"), gamification system with points/badges/rankings, and technical connection to the Microsoft ecosystem. Key decision: the art gallery metaphor was both aesthetic and functional — a direct response to what users themselves said.
Pilot with a real case — week of 12–16 July 2021
I designed the full pilot protocol: participant selection, "pioneer roles" training, prototype adaption with a real continuous-improvement scenario and execution with users under genuine conditions. Key decision: use a real case — not fictitious — to separate stakeholder approval (already secured) from real user validation. Findings: regional visualisation was the most valued feature; gamification needed tangible rewards to be sustainable; onboarding was the critical entry point. Pivot: the initial hypothesis was to build a standalone platform. Technical discovery with SURA's "Digital Workplace" team revealed the Microsoft ecosystem already supported flexible enough integrations — the pivot from "build from scratch" to "design on what exists" reduced technical friction, accelerated timelines and aligned with IT from the start.
There is no formal quantitative metric — the project closed before the first usage data was generated (approximately 6 months later). The result is the decision the team made based on the delivered work.
- From informal coordination (emails + personal contacts) to a regional platform with a unified initiative feed
- From tacit, informal roles to a defined role architecture (Curator · Facilitator · Inventor) with clear responsibilities
- From knowledge trapped in individuals to knowledge management with histories transferable across subsidiaries
- From standalone platform (initial hypothesis) to native integration with the Microsoft ecosystem — reducing technical friction and implementation time
"This platform is a relief to a pain and a need we have today."
Hernán Alejandro GiraldoDirector of New Business Development · Seguros SURA
"You knock on five doors before anyone tells you that final person is who can help you."
Moisés CernaSub-manager, Administration & Risk Management · Seguros SURA
"It leverages the company to look at the client from a regional perspective."
Javier de la RocheAutosSURA Manager · Seguros SURA
The platform entered implementation after the pilot. Given the nature of SURA's corporate cycles, the first usage data was generated approximately 6 months after my participation in the project closed.
From day one I'd have negotiated a post-launch metrics tracking agreement — even at 30, 60 and 90 days. The absence of quantitative adoption data is the most visible gap in this case. Not because the work didn't function, but because I have no way to prove it with numbers.
The gamification system was conceptually validated during the pilot, but its sustainability depended on HR tangibilising rewards into real benefits. That institutional integration was never defined within my scope. Designing motivation without control over the actual reward levers is a structural limitation that UX alone can't solve.
Due to contractual and confidentiality conditions with Seguros SURA, original platform screenshots are not shown. The images are approximate representations for illustrative purposes.
