Widgets and Dashboard
Drag & Drop
Junior advisors often struggle to create new portfolios, as balancing risk and profitability is challenging. The current setup adds cognitive strain, making them hesitant to recommend new strategies and rely instead on defaults like the S&P 500.
“I can’t find my book of business.” 500+ applications individually sitting on the platform “Connect”, driven by engineers and legacy information architecture.
Ultra-wealthy clients expect first-class service, but advisors often lack immediate access to their complete financial profiles, leading to delays in response. Advisors typically let calls go to voicemail while they gather the necessary information before calling back. Advisors often struggle with poorly designed apps that require repeatedly entering client identification numbers, leading to errors and prolonged task completion times, which can stretch to days or weeks.
Designed a new Risk Summary chart with a color wheel showing risk levels from 0% to 200%, enabling junior advisors to gauge risk at a glance. Usability tests confirmed this intuitive approach significantly boosted advisor confidence.
Build Portfolio
Advisors can zoom in on client-specific investments financtial goals and benchmarking tools.
Analyze Portfolio
Risk level visible from Step 1 to avoid wasted effort.
Generate Report
New, accessible using vivid color wheel enhanced risk level’s readability significantly. This allows advisorsto grasp the risk level instantly.
Prototype
Discovery
Research Findings
Advisors expressed a need for a clear, robust risk indicator to confidently recommend strategies. They expressed a need to understand the risk levels of their own strategies, aiming to empower themselves with the confidence needed to recommend such strategies to clients.
Competitor Analysis
I studied system visibility from apps like Chase, Venmo, and Sweetgreen, noting effective use of status indicators. The results show the visibility of status helps users make informed decisions along their way of completing their processs.
Ideate
New Workflow & Constant Visibility. The existing workflow forces advisors to complete all steps, only shows Risk Summary in the final step. This led to scenarios where advisors were unaware of the risk level in their strategies, resulting in wasted time building strategies that ultimately proved too risky. After multiple unsuccessful attempts, many advisors resorted to Firm Wide strategies, perceived as “safe”.
Ideation. Created a new workflow to enhance experience and align with business goals.
"What if color gradients were used to instantly show risk levels?"
"What if Risk Summary was visible at every step?"
The new workflow enables advisors to assess Portfolio Risk at each step, fostering confidence in their decision-making.
Iterate
From Bar Charts to Color Wheels. I explored various chart options. The Design System leaned towards bar charts. Yet, after user testing, it became evident that users preferred a 'Color Wheel' style chart. Following advice from Backend Engineers, I removed the middle needle since the Model consistently registers 100%.
Design System
I built a new color wheel component to add to the Design System to ensure better compliance with the latest WCAG 2.2 standard. It was implemented across various other apps.
Dev Handoff
I have also created redlined file as Dev Handoff files so the engineers can understand my design intentions clearly.
Validate
Usability Test: Significantly Improved Advisor Experience
After two weeks of usability test, analysis and redesign, I was able to validate the assumptions and changes we have made. The results are clear that the new design has improved advisors' digital experience significantly.
Lessons learned.
Users prefer continuous feedback rather than a final score, as clear metrics (like calories, ratings, or refunds) help them refine decisions in real-time.
Early coordination with the Dev team was crucial in preventing unrealistic designs and avoiding complete redesigns.
Future explorations
Show futuristic AI powered risk assessments.