Markets Risk Platform

Basics

Context

Including problem statements below due to the size and complexity of the project

• Migrating a legacy version of the application to a new application with complete UX/Product overhaul

• Application for all front-office users (8,000+ global internal users) with 10 distinct user groups, where each user group uses the application very differently (e.g. admin type power users vs. minimal usage users dealing with high risk tasks)

  • Most popular journey of the application is a maker-checker type items for risk measure tasks

  • Other journeys include, a group of users sending attestations to a different set of users, managing their trade permissions, and many more

• Legacy version entailed 16 individual pages + 9 sub-pages (see Information Architecture project for how this changed)

• No previous UX involvement in the team prior to my start. This includes lack of support from both engineering and business sponsors

• Poor performance rate and negative perception of the application from users as it's "too complicated, unintuitive, and slow"

Highlights

• Built new relationship with stakeholders and engineers to put UX at the forefront and invest in UX overhaul

• Increased performance rate by 45% for the main journey of the application (users disposing alerts / tasks from their inbox)

• Researched & designed 10 modules as a lead and sole designer within two years, responsible from beginning to end including dev handover and post-production feedback from users

  • Includes user interviews, usage data analytics, hosting workshops, prototyping, and usability testing

  • User feedback include "clean and easy to follow", "I can actually know exactly what's on my plate today and track them", "it's so much quicker to find the items I need now", and more.

• Optimized the information architecture after conducting card sorting workshop and user interviews

Challenges & How I Overcame Them

Challenge #1

The application has very distinct sets of users, interviewing a small group of users was sometimes misleading as they don't represent other user roles and in turns made the design decision making process tougher ("Curse of knowledge")

Solution

For modules that serve various sets of user roles, I made sure to design so that it has potential to be scaled up in the future iterations thus fostering an agile environment and is susceptible to both expected and unexpected user feedback post-release. For example, leaving enough space for there to be other features added, and adding different types of layout options in the settings so it caters for different audience.

Challenge #2

Though the project is an overhaul of legacy application, some of the backend architecture were staying the same. This also meant that with the newly researched and designed user journeys, the 10-year old backend system was no longer serving the right purpose. However, due to the nature of fast-paced environment in the banking industry we didn't have the time to re-do some of the backend work as well, which meant the UX design also had to adapt accordingly.

Solution

Leveraged my developer background and regularly communicated with our architects, and communicating limitations vs. potentials to our stakeholders. Throughout, I adapted the designs quickly to the change of requirements with mapping prioritizations vs. efforts vs. costs (from both dev and design perspective), and delivered the most efficient and practical solution first and building out future plans for more enhancements.