Role: Lead Designer, Service & E-Commerce
Context
Magenta Prepaid is T-Mobile’s original prepaid offering, providing flexible wireless plans to users who often don’t fit a typical postpaid profile. While it shares some backend platforms with other brands, its audience, flows, and business logic are distinct. I lead UX across both the e-commerce and service experiences, ensuring design consistency, system alignment, and clear prioritization despite major platform and budget constraints.
Audience
Magenta Prepaid serves a more international and older user base, with a higher concentration of non-U.S. residents, frequent travelers, and users with higher income but lower tech fluency. These users often engage with the product in short bursts (e.g., while visiting the U.S.) and commonly choose bring-your-own-device activations over full device purchases.
Strategic Role
Magenta Prepaid sits at the crossroads of flexibility and simplicity. It offers a range of plans—including data-only options and a la carte add-ons—and must serve a wide range of needs without overwhelming users. While Metro leads in volume, Magenta has unique business cases that make it an essential part of the prepaid ecosystem.
My Role & Ownership
Since stepping into the Senior Designer role in late 2023, I’ve taken full ownership of UX across both service and e-commerce flows for Magenta Prepaid. My responsibilities include:
Acting as UX subject matter expert for Magenta-specific logic, constraints, and flows
Owning and documenting all design updates, including UX migration to Phoenix (PHX) for both service and e-commerce
Maintaining and evolving a prioritized backlog of UX opportunities, even when projects are paused or defunded
Delegating work to teammates when capacity allows, and personally stepping in during turnover to ensure continuity and clarity
Leading efforts to resolve accessibility gaps, ensure dev feasibility, and push for system alignment
Challenges
The biggest tension on this brand is budget and technical constraint. The current experience was largely designed by engineers directly in code. The platform (Rebellion on Angular) has limited flexibility, and product struggles to secure funding—often stalling projects mid-design. Without a dedicated product team or formal roadmap for Prepaid Service, I’ve stepped in to own and manage strategic backlog documentation and prepare flows for future investment.
Now that we’re actively migrating to the PHX system, I’ve gained more opportunity to introduce meaningful UX improvements, especially in the e-commerce space. Despite ongoing platform limits, I’ve been able to work directly with engineering to identify where we can improve—and how to get the most out of the system.
My Approach
I lead Magenta Prepaid with a mix of vision and adaptability. I know where we need to go, and I break that down into what’s realistic based on engineering capacity and platform readiness. I’ve learned to be highly resourceful and deeply systems-aware—navigating dev limitations, shifting priorities, and design handoffs with as little friction as possible.
As Phoenix migration work accelerates, I’ve been managing delegation of e-commerce updates while stepping in directly to resolve accessibility, layout, and platform issues. Where others might get blocked by system rigidity or budget ceilings, I look for creative workarounds, and I keep the team aligned on what’s possible now—and what’s worth fighting for next.
Impact
Since taking over design for Magenta Prepaid:
I’ve built and maintained a full UX backlog, enabling continuity even when projects are paused or teams shift
I’ve transitioned the experience into PHX, identifying and solving for brand-specific nuances in service and commerce
I’ve increased design presence and accountability where previously engineers shipped without UX guidance
I’ve directly improved system cohesion, accessibility, and design quality in e-commerce flows previously untouched by design