Unified SSO - Case study

Project Overview

As Cardinal Financial expanded its digital ecosystem, authentication became a growing point of friction. Borrowers had multiple entry points into the Cardinal ecosystem, ranging from loan officer referrals and third-party channels to several Cardinal products such as Public Loan Quote (PLQ), Smart App, and the Borrower Dashboard. Each entry point relied on fragmented account creation and sign-in experiences, modern authentication options like Google and Apple Sign-In were unavailable, and there was no scalable authentication framework that could support future products.

The opportunity was to design a unified single sign-on (SSO) experience that simplified authentication while establishing a centralized foundation across Cardinal’s borrower platform and web experiences. Originally designed using Cardinal’s Kinetic 3.0 design system, the experience was later modernized even further with the AI-native Northstar design system before entering engineering QA and internal beta testing.

Impact

The new SSO system introduces modern authentication options, unifies previously fragmented sign-in flows, and creates a cohesive, scalable foundation that will power future borrower experiences across Cardinal Financial.

Following its upcoming launch, we anticipate the unified SSO will also optimize product analytics, allowing the team to measure completion rates, sign-in method adoption, drop-off points, and user behavior in a centralized manner across entry points and streamline future iterations through A/B testing.

The unified authentication screens on desktop and mobile: a Create Your Account page beside a branded panel headed Complete your application, offering registration with Google or Apple above an email form, and a Sign In To Your Account page offering the same two social options above email and password. — A unified authentication experience across desktop and mobile, bringing Google, Apple, and email sign-in into one scalable entry point shared across Cardinal’s borrower ecosystem.

My Role

Initially, I partnered with product leadership, product specialists, engineering, and other cross-functional stakeholders to establish a modern authentication experience that could scale across Cardinal Financial’s digital ecosystem. Following an organizational restructuring shortly after kickoff, I assumed ownership of the initiative from the product side, leading discovery, experience strategy, design, implementation, and QA through internal beta testing while continuing to collaborate closely with engineering and other cross-functional stakeholders. In addition, shortly after finalizing the initial design, I migrated the experience from Cardinal’s Kinetic 3.0 design system to the AI-native Northstar design system, anchoring the experience in a nimble, AI-assisted workflow.

My key responsibilities included:

User research and authentication flow audits
Borrower journey mapping
Competitive analysis
Information architecture
UX strategy
Low-, mid-, and high-fidelity design
Interactive prototyping
Cross-functional collaboration
Developer handoff
Northstar design system migration
Design QA and internal beta testing

Beyond designing a discrete authentication experience, I helped establish a scalable SSO framework that can support new points of entry and future Cardinal Financial products and web experiences.

The Challenge

Authentication wasn’t simply a login problem, it was an ecosystem problem.

Cardinal borrowers begin their journey through PLQ, Smart App, the Borrower Dashboard, loan officer referrals, third-party mortgage sites, email, or even phone. Each pathway introduces a different context, but every borrower still needs a seamless, secure, and trustworthy authentication experience.

The challenge was to design a unified authentication system that reduced friction while remaining flexible enough to support multiple borrower journeys, new points of entry, and future Cardinal products.

A flow map of the legacy sign-in routes, headed Legacy, tracing the loan-officer-initiated Smart App path and the borrower-initiated PLQ and online application path across dozens of screens, with separate branches for Borrower Dashboard sign-in behavior, and alarm icons marking the points where borrowers got stuck. — Mapping every legacy route into a Cardinal account revealed where authentication paths diverged, duplicated effort, or reached dead ends across the borrower ecosystem.

Research & Discovery

I began discovery by auditing existing authentication experiences across Cardinal’s Borrower Experience ecosystem, mapping user journeys and identifying friction throughout registration, sign-in, password recovery, and account activation.

Collaborating closely with a product specialist, I documented edge cases and reviewed modern authentication patterns used across leading digital products to understand how they balanced convenience, trust, and security.

Ten boards auditing the legacy authentication experience: existing sign-in and complete-your-account screens collected in Figma, the real Octane activation email and account-completion pages walked through step by step with friction flagged by an alarm icon, and detailed borrower register, borrower login and lender sign-in flow diagrams where red markers call out edge cases such as no user found, invalid or expired codes, forgotten passwords, and adding or changing a recovery phone. — Auditing each authentication path exposed the edge cases behind registration, sign-in, activation, and account recovery, creating a complete picture of how the existing experience behaved.

Findings from the internal audit and market research informed multiple rounds of low-, mid-, and high-fidelity exploration focused on information hierarchy, authentication flow architecture, responsive behavior, and recovery experiences.

Eight Figma boards of authentication exploration: flow diagrams built from decision points and outcomes, then wireframe flows labeled SSO Flow Register with Google, SSO Flow Sign In with Google and SSO Flow Sign In Error, and finally high-fidelity screen sequences covering registration and sign-in with their verification and error states. — Multiple rounds of exploration moved from flow architecture and wireframes through high-fidelity design, refining hierarchy, responsive behavior, authentication methods, and recovery paths.

Solution & Design

Following thorough discovery and collaborative reviews with stakeholders, the solution evolved into a unified authentication framework supporting both traditional account creation and modern social sign-in.

Signing in with Google on desktop and mobile. The Sign In To Your Account card offers Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple above email and password, with the Google Choose an account window open over it to continue to the Octane Borrower Dashboard, and the mobile Borrower Dashboard that follows, welcoming Jane to her loan home base with a Welcome, Jane Hopper confirmation. — Google SSO provides a seamless path through authentication and into any connected Cardinal product, shown here with the Borrower Dashboard.

Account registration on desktop and mobile. The desktop Create Your Account page sits beside a Complete your application panel, with three states of the Resend Activation Email dialog over it, followed by the mobile journey running from a filled registration form through an invalid phone number error, a Check Your Inbox confirmation, completing the account, and arriving at the loan application. — Registration from start to finish, including activation and recovery paths designed to keep borrowers moving through account creation and into their application.

The Complete Your Account screen on desktop and mobile, setting a password, choosing a challenge question and answer, and either opting into or skipping two-step verification, shown first filled in and then with a password that fails validation, its requirements checklist ticking off the rules met and crossing the ones missed. — Account completion makes security requirements clear upfront, with real-time password guidance and optional two-step verification across desktop and mobile.

Traditional Cardinal account sign-in moves borrowers through email and password authentication and two-step verification. Across authentication methods, profile selection appears only when multiple borrowers share a loan, routing each borrower into their individual experience.

The final experience provides a consistent authentication system supporting:

Seamless routing into PLQ, Smart App, Borrower Dashboard, and other current and future products in Cardinal’s borrower ecosystem
Google and Apple Sign-In
Traditional email registration and login
Password recovery and account activation
Validation, loading, error, and success states
Responsive mobile and desktop experiences

This critical edge case allows existing Cardinal account holders to link Google or Apple SSO as an additional sign-in method, giving borrowers another way to securely access the same account if they prefer SSO to traditional sign-in.

Rather than solving authentication for a single feature, the solution establishes a centralized platform that can scale across Cardinal Financial’s expanding digital ecosystem.

Reflection

Creating a unified SSO experience required more than simply aggregating fragmented experiences and mashing them together. It required a deep dive into each existing authentication flow, a reflection on the company’s core design foundations, and most of all, forward-thinking design. A centralized authentication experience will not only present a cohesive experience for borrowers accessing the Cardinal ecosystem but also empower the Cardinal team to scale at greater speed and build with more flexibility. This has become a core principle that informs all of my designs, and with each project, I aim to create scalable, adaptable foundations that support long-term growth and evolving product needs.

Creating a Unified SSO Experience for Cardinal Financial

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