Global Preference Center

Designing a clear, reliable transaction history experience for mobile app users

Mobile Designs

Unauthorized w/ frequency drop down
Unauthorized w/o frequency drop down
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Success alert: Unauthorized w/o frequency drop down
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Failed alert: Unauthorized w/o frequency drop down

Desktop Designs

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Unauthorized w/o frequency drop down
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Success alert: Unauthorized w/ frequency drop down
Failed alert: Unauthorized w/ frequency drop down
Failed alert: Unauthorized w/o frequency drop down

OVERVIEW

The Global Preference Center is a multi-platform communication management experience that gives National Grid customers control over how and when they receive communications.

The first iteration focused on marketing preferences for an unauthenticated experience across mobile and desktop. The authenticated experience is currently pending architectural decisions.

TEAM AND DURATION

1 Product Designer (me)

2 Product Design Leads

September 2025- December 2025

PRODUCT CONTEXT

The Problem with Preferences

Background: National Grid customers have no centralized place to manage their communication preferences across platforms like Unified Web Portal (UWP) and My Business Account (MBA). This made it difficult for users to find or understand their communication settings in one place.

The goal was ti design a unified preference center that gave users a clear, accessible way to manage their preferences across marketing and transactional communications.

Solution: The MVP focused on giving users control over what they receive and when. The long term vision expands to include transactional emails, SMS, and phone channel. Key considerations include profile vs account level access and designing for scalability since we will include more communication channels in the future.

Current Unauthenticated Experience

Current Authenticated Experience

PHASE 1

Research & Narratives

Before designing anything, the team ran user interviews and A/B testing from a push notifications project that is currently in progress. Though Global preferences and push notifications are different, we used that research t to understand how users wanted to manage preferences. Three concepts were tested ranging from simple modality control to highly granular settings. The key insight that changed everything was users preferred category-first organization over channel-first. That finding directly shaped every design decision that followed.

Research Findings

Unauthenticated and Authenticated (Mobile)

User: Emily was going through her emails and saw a marketing email from National Grid. While reading the email, she realized that she wanted more control over her communication preferences for payments so she signs into National Grid

Rationale: In this flow, the user navigates to the unauthenticated flow through a link in her email from National Grid. Because she wants more control, she signs in. In these narratives we wanted to focus on having all modalities and categories to see how we could scale. We currently have required transactional preferences so we wanted to be transparent with the user by providing that up front by having the checkbox at a lower opacity that indicates that the user can’t make the selection because it’s greyed out.

Authenticated (Desktop)

User: Emily has been receiving a surplus of SMS and phone calls from National Grid that it’s starting to clutter her phone. She decides to log into National Grid to update her preferences.

Rationale: When data fails to load, users shouldn’t be left wondering what went wrong. Showing what’s available while being transparent about what’s missing keeps users informed without blocking their full experience.

PHASE 2: MOBILE

Building for Now, Designing for Later: Mobile

With the narrative aligned, I moved into design exploration — testing different layout approaches for both the unauthenticated and authenticated experiences on mobile.

Explored multiple layout options for the unauthenticated experience — testing different sign in patterns, hierarchy approaches, and how to present preferences without overwhelming users who just want a quick change.

Unauthenticated Screen Exploration

Explored how users would land on the preference center — considering helper text, current preference state indicators, and how to set clear expectations before users dive in.

Entry Point Exploration

Explored how much descriptive text was needed to help users understand their options. Explored variations with descriptive text, without, and a version that included both a Preference Center intro and category level descriptions to find the right balance between clarity and visual noise.

Authenticated Screen Exploration

PHASE 2: DESKTOP

Building for Now, Designing for Later: Desktop

Explored an accordion pattern showing all categories collapsed by default with the ability to expand inline. Compared collapsed and expanded states to evaluate how the layout handled increasing amounts of content without requiring users to navigate away from the page.

Explored different sign in patterns for the unauthenticated desktop experience by comparing the current copy and text link pattern against a more prominent sign in button to determine which approach felt clearer without making sign in feel mandatory.

Unauthenticated Screen Exploration

Authenticated Exploration- Progressive Disclosure

Explored a two step navigation pattern where users land on a high level preference center and navigate into specific categories. This approach reduces cognitive load on the landing page but adds an extra step for users who know exactly what they want to update.

Explored an accordion pattern showing all categories collapsed by default with the ability to expand inline. Compared collapsed and expanded states to evaluate how the layout handled increasing amounts of content without requiring users to navigate away from the page.

Authenticated Exploration- Accordion

HANDOFF AND NEXT STEPS

Next Steps

The unauthenticated preference center has been handed off to product is in the process of being delivered. The authenticated experience is currently on hold pending several open architectural questions that directly impact how the experience can be built. Specifically the team is waiting on clarity around how customer identity and preference ownership will be handled since customers may have multiple accounts per email or multiple emails per account, decisions around where preferences live and how changes apply across accounts need to be resolved first. Once next steps are confirmed, the authenticated experience will move forward as iteration 2. Future iterations are also expected to expand beyond marketing emails to include transactional communications, billing and payment notifications, outage alerts, and SMS preferences, thus building on the scalable foundation established in this first iteration.