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Creativity that's made billions

A principal advertising & product designer based in Austin, Texas. I help businesses create resonating brands and products using AI creative tools to elevate their most authentic work and human talent.

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Patrick Nolan

Principal Product Designer

30+ years of experience

Home

Projects

About

Email

Creativity that's made billions

A principal advertising & product designer based in Austin, Texas. I help businesses create resonating brands and products using AI creative tools to elevate their most authentic work and human talent.

VIEW CASE STUDIES

Patrick Nolan

Principal Product Designer

30+ years of experience

Mercury Financial Brand & Digital

Mercury, a credit card company reassessing all of its branding, also wanted to create a fintech intellectual property. I was provided with an abstract infographic-like idea without a value proposition. The goal was to transform it into something they could patent and use across their brand marketing, and integrate into their web and applications. The starting point was their current application.

FIRST OCULUS

ROLE

UX Design Manager +Creative Director

PROBLEM

The overarching goal was to create an innovative "non-banky" mobile app .

The current application was functional but lacked current branding and was showing its age. It was time for a brand audit across the company to drive brand evolution:

Apps | website portal | email templates and communication strategy.

  • Brainstormed with the UX team and business leadership.

  • Designed, researched, and sought a patent for IP for a new credit card product within two months.

  • Repositioned money app as a key communication and as well as financial education channel.

  • I expanded its function beyond a payment tool into an innovative communication channel.

  • Converted to full time to continue driving and elevating creative vision.

This initiative led to personalized data analysis, goal setting, and improved credit scores for near-prime users. While a Digital Strategy Director handled day-to-day operations, I developed the UX/UI creative team, established agile processes, led creative integrations with third-party partners (including a London agency), and built a scalable Figma Design System.

RESULTS

60% increase in active weekly users within 3 months

70% "willing to use" to use the new UI

Consistent 4.8/5 user satisfaction score in post-launch feedback

I-30% reduced phone support requests and more onboarding completions

ROLE

UX Design Manager +Creative Director

PROBLEM

The overarching goal was to create an innovative "non-banky" mobile app .

The current application was functional but lacked current branding and was showing its age. It was time for a brand audit across the company to drive brand evolution:

Apps | website portal | email templates and communication strategy.

  • Brainstormed with the UX team and business leadership.

  • Designed, researched, and sought a patent for IP for a new credit card product within two months.

  • Repositioned money app as a key communication and as well as financial education channel.

  • I expanded its function beyond a payment tool into an innovative communication channel.

  • Converted to full time to continue driving and elevating creative vision.

This initiative led to personalized data analysis, goal setting, and improved credit scores for near-prime users. While a Digital Strategy Director handled day-to-day operations, I developed the UX/UI creative team, established agile processes, led creative integrations with third-party partners (including a London agency), and built a scalable Figma Design System.

RESULTS

60% increase in active weekly users within 3 months

70% "willing to use" to use the new UI

Consistent 4.8/5 user satisfaction score in post-launch feedback

I-30% reduced phone support requests and more onboarding completions

Understanding the Pain Points

  • Early user interviews and session recordings were clear: the product was not helping people who felt low control of their financial picture. It wasn't encouraging auto-payment setups.

  • UI was to much like every other bank in tone, color, and style

  • There was no clear hierarchy, and task flows required too many steps for even the most basic actions.

  • Consumers were making payments but not gaining strategy for improving their finances

A Relentless Pursuit

Mapped the existing app workflows and identified friction points at each step, and brainstormed new design opportunities to enable customers.

  • Focused on removing barriers:

    1. eliminated unnecessary clicks,

    2. surfaced essential data,

    3. streamlined how users moved through lead and pipeline views.

  • Branded and rebranded pursuant to board satisfaction

  • Retested UI Usability for go/no go

  • Began the brand design and design pattern library

  • Brought in a team to apply additional horsepower to creating a full scale enterprise design library system

  • Managed the transition to the new library and the conversion of all pages

In Conclusion

The Mercury redesign wasn’t just about aesthetics—it was about empowering users to work smarter and faster. By identifying real pain points, simplifying complex workflows, and designing with intention, we transformed a dated system into a product that enabled users for a better credit life.

The measurable improvements in adoption, efficiency, control, financial transparency, and satisfaction proved that great design can drive real business impact.

Mercury Financial just sold for $128 million dollars.

Atlanticus Announces Acquisition of Mercury Financial LLC
Company Release - 9/11/2025 5:00 PM ET

  • Adds $3.2 billion of credit card receivables to Atlanticus’ general purpose credit card segment.

  • Expands Atlanticus’ product offering and capabilities into the much larger near-prime consumer segment

  • Brings together two platforms that share a relentless focus on meeting the needs of the financially underserved