PROJECT OVERVIEW
Pilot is an internal web application that data analysts use to generate various financial reports for a financial services company based in Southern California. These reports support the investment group on a recurring and ad-hoc basis. For this project, I was responsible for designing a financial holdings dashboard using readily available data.
About this project: Holdings Dashboard
Problem: How might I create a new dashboard using readily available data to improve analysis of financial holdings data?
Solution: Design a new dashboard to summarize important data points surrounding financial holdings and provide useful insights for users.
Timeline: The design and implementation process took about 2 months.
My Role: UX/UI Designer
Team: Myself
Tools: Figma
Step 1: Exploring existing investment data reports across the department
I began my exploration by reviewing existing data reports that the users produced on a recurring basis. I came to conclusion that the most common holdings data found on the reports were:
Top and bottom financial holdings of a specific portfolio
Financial sector exposure of a specific portfolio
Comparing exposure over time
Comparing the difference in exposure across a specific time period
Step 2: Interviewing users
I interviewed 6 users across 4 teams to identify the most important pieces of investment data and understand the types of data requests they work on. The big takeaways were:
Users typically look at portfolio data surrounding holdings, transactions, turnover, and investment results.
Market value and total net assets is important.
Users want to access more historical data and see visual representation of it.
Step 3: Hi-fidelity mockups
I went straight into creating hi-fi mockups because it was easier to communicate ideas/receive feedback from users and due to time constraints of the project. I referenced existing designs from other tabs of the dashboard, streamlining the design process.
Below: Mockups showing the first iteration of the holdings dashboard with a chevron dropdown to switch the Exposure Over Time graph.
Below: Mockups of the second iteration of the holdings dashboard with two simple icons to switch the Exposure Over Time graph.
Step 4: Final design & handoff to developers
After gathering feedback from the Product Owner and users, I finalized my design and handed over requirements to developers using a story in Jira. I explicitly listed out all requirements (font, colors, padding, etc.) and provided the mockups as that was the preferred method of communication.
Below: A short video of the final design after gathering feedback from the Product Owner and users (created using Figma Prototyping). Shows the expand/collapse of Top 20 holdings data.
Reflection
This project gave me some creative freedoms while adhering to users’ desired report formatting. It was great to work with users and validate these reports would be useful and save them time in their daily analysis. While the IT team does not track user analytics, I would want to know which visualizations are being used the most to understand if there would be opportunity to build another visualization to help users dig deeper in their analysis.