Financial Insights Credit Research
As the lead product designer on this fintech product, I led a group of designers and worked closely with the business and engineering teams in creating a platform that provides a myriad of in-depth credit research to the global financial community.
The client’s name and branding has been edited in order to protect their privacy
Entering at a Pivotal Time
Having recently been acquired by a global leader in financial information services, our client had a strict timeline to improve the usability of their already in-depth research capabilities while folding in news and data content from similarly acquired products.
Through collaborating with stakeholders who all wanted their legacy offerings to be honored in this singular new brand, this was a great opportunity to let user and business needs dictate clear solutions in crafting one powerful yet intuitive new platform.
My Role
Joining after the workshop phase, I was brought in to lead design throughout delivery. I worked with the PM and BA as the main points of contact with the client, designed key flows, ran testing, maintained the design system, and executed the overall design vision.
A Seamless Flow of Insights
Designing for finance professionals who need instant access to a breadth of market data, my first priority was creating a feed that kept them connected to the research, news, and analysis that would inform their investment decisions.
I took advantage of rapid sketching to align stakeholders early on about overall page structure before moving into high fidelity designs that showcased:
Customizable content
Condensed and expanded views
Pinned widgets
Being able to preview articles without exiting the feed
Unrivaled Access to Data Driven Content
I created a clean, scannable base article page to help quickly inform investment decisions, whether analyzing any number different sectors, market segments, loans, securities, high yield bonds, or any other piece of complicated financial content.
Digging Deeper
With users wanting granular insights into individual issuers/companies, we built a new widget-based layout that showed all relevant information to that specific company.
I collaborated extensively with engineers and the client team in optimizing a page hierarchy that was well-organized no matter the amount of input text or available data.
Access Anytime, Anywhere
Custom-curated content across multiple platform sizes, from users’ desks or on the go. With a market that never sleeps, we designed the application responsively from desktop to tablet to mobile, so that users never miss breaking news and same-day analysis
Mobile
Tablet
Extensive Testing
User testing was especially important on this engagement because not only did we have to validate design decisions with end users, but we had to maintain an extensive prototype for business sign-off throughout delivery. With stakeholder politics behind the scenes, the prototype helped sell them on our end vision and solidify project extensions.
Careful Curation
Despite having a team of 100+ research analysts around the globe, who could better curate content than the users themselves? In addition to the ‘My Feed’ page displaying markets, sectors, and companies that were user-selected, we added the ability to bookmark articles, create watchlists, save searches, and manage alert preferences so that users could better find (and quickly return to) what matters most to them.
Anticipating Needs
Knowing there is an extensive amount of content for users to filter through and that certain users are often routinely using the same search criteria, we built a saved searches feature that would expedite their process.
Similarly, we also developed a smart typeahead to help find what they were looking for without having to sift through all of the results.
Final Thoughts
Between leading a team of designers and working closely with an engineering team abroad, this project further pushed my belief in collaboration and extreme ownership.
I traveled to Lithuania to work in-person and was amazed at the number of problems we solved simply by involving engineers at the onset of my ideation and iteration process. Since, I’ve made sure to schedule consistent product/tech syncs early in each sprint.
Below are a few photos from the team dinners and sightseeing.
