Finding money in a city you just landed in: redesigning the agent locator

For millions of people, a Western Union agent is where money physically arrives — rent, remittances, emergencies. The locator existed to answer one question: where can I go, right now, to do the thing I need? It wasn't answering it.

01Outcome

The redesigned locator shipped as a responsive experience across Western Union's retail-network footprint. The structural change — eligibility-first search over pin-first browsing — is the part I'd defend anywhere: it's the same principle I later applied to enterprise flows, where the product's real job is telling people whether something will work before they invest effort in it.

02What research surfaced

Users weren't browsing a map for fun; they arrived with a task and constraints — send cash before 6pm, receive a transfer near a bus route, find a location that handles their specific service. The existing experience made them do the work: scan pins, open entries one by one, discover too late that a location didn't offer the service or was closed. One participant put it plainly: "Looking for locations on this map is giving my eyes a headache. I don't like spending time online."

The insight that reframed the project: the locator is not a map product; it's an eligibility product. The map is just how you show the answer.

03Design decisions

• Search around the task, not the geography. Service type, hours, and capabilities became first-class filters rather than detail-page surprises.
• Results that answer before the tap. Cards carry the disqualifying information — open now, services offered — so users stop opening dead ends.
• Mobile as the primary reality. The person using this is often standing on a street; the mobile flow was designed first, desktop derived from it.