Case Study Banner
Overview

The primary goal was to lead the design processes for the redesign of this platform and design a self-serving tool for automating the generation of reports.

Alterest is a B2B SaaS fintech platform, specializing in data delivery, in-depth analytics, and flexible reporting on loan portfolios and asset classes.

Visit website
UX Design
Design System
User Experience Research
SaaS
Responsive Design

Project Details

Role :

I was the sole designer working cross functionally with the product owner, sales and customer service folks and developers.
User Research: User Interviews, Persona Mapping, Information architecture
Design: Sketches, Wireframing, Design system, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Timeline: 6 months, launched in 2022.

Tools :

Sketching, Figma and Balsamiq.

Go to Self-serve tool's prototype

Team Member

Case Team Image

Sylvester Stallone

Designer
Case Team Image

Lucy Liu

Developer
Case Team Image

Joni Mitchell

Designer
Case Team Image

David Bowie

UI Lead

Problem

Problem Icon
Untapped potential: While the platform was built to support the end-to-end process of report generation with in-depth analytics, most of the users would use only a few features based on their roles.
Problem Tab Image
The platform lacked consistency, flexibility, and was difficult to use, due to increased cognitive load for users. Additionally, users were unable to properly customize reports which led to frustration among users, necessitating frequent calls to the customer service team. This combination of issues negatively impacts user experience and overall satisfaction with the platform.
Problem Tab Image

Solution

Problem Icon

Improve the overall efficiency in using the platform by digging deeper into common user journeys to identify opportunities to engage users more effectively and meaningfully.

Overview of the process:

  • User research to evaluate the current state of the platform.
  • Set up a design system based on React Bootstrap framework for dark and light themes.
  • Set up user journeys, wireframes, conduct user testing for designing the self-serving tool.
Solution Image
User research

Evaluating the current state of the platform

In order to gain valuable insights and drive user-centric improvements, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of how users are currently interacting with and experiencing the platform.

Research Image
Step 1

Survey customers

A survey was conducted engaging the client's portfolio manager and data champions to determine the company's reasons for using the platform and the most used features.

Research Image
Step 2

Contextual inquiries

Then the users were asked to complete a series of task during a contextual interview and their interactions were noted to understand how the platform is being used.

Research Image
Step 3

Indepth Interviews

Conducted Interviews with the data team that helps manage client dashboards and customer support folks to understand where the client faced blockers and outline the most persistent issues.

Findings

In crafting the designs, I laid the groundwork by establishing heuristics, providing a framework for the design solution. Leveraging insights from user research, analytics, and competitor analysis, I iterated on layouts to enhance the overall user experience, fostering a more intuitive and user-friendly platform.

Building on insights from user interviews, CTR reports and competitive research, I established the following design goals:

This also helped us understand what kind of modularity and features would be needed by the customer to use a self-serving feature.

#1 Complex navigation 🧭
  • Complex navigation hindered access to information.
  • Users underutilized the platform, focusing on limited features.
#2 Confusing user journey 🪢
  • Users limited themselves to specific features and followed a set of fixed steps.
  • We could identify the happy path for our primary users.
#3 Uncovered opportunities
and inconsistencies 🚧
  • Identified usability issues due to missing features such as search and filter.
  • Discovered that many users would prefer a light theme

Understanding the target audience

Problem Icon

Through the discovery process I uncovered three primary roles within our customers and discovered how they used the platform:

Data providers: Only require to upload data and get it formatted in the required template.
Data champions: Can upload, run analytics, and generate reports or use workflow features to automate their process.
Portfolio managers: Derive insights from the generated reports and use workflows to manage client portfolio(s).
Design system

Standardizing the platform

As part of the revamp to establish standardization, I created a design system that works both for light and dark theme.

Style guide: Created design tokens such as its logo, color palette, shadows, typography, and graph colors(data visualization) as well as how they should be used in various contexts through a style guide.

Plan Image

Designing reusable and user-friendly component library.

Building the design system
User Research

⚛️ System created based on Atomic design principles.

📐Components catering to cross-platform responsiveness.

🎨 Components for both light and dark theme.

📊 Guidelines for data visualization.

Story Image
Story Image
UI Revamp

Introducing personalization

Leveraging the endowment effect and insights from user research I introduced theming and brand identity to the dashboard. Allowing users to customize the dashboard with their brand colors and logo.

Case Page Image

Dark theme

Case Page Image

Light theme

Case Page Image

Career

Case Page Image

Blog

Case Page Image

Integration

Case Page Image

Contact Us

Introducing light theme

  • A light theme improved readability, making content easier to view and understand.
  • Reduced eye strain and fatigue, making it more comfortable for usage over extended periods of time.
  • A light theme with high contrast made the platform easier to navigate and use, improving accessibility.
Case Page Image

Home

Case Page Image

Plan & Pricing

Case Page Image

Career

Case Page Image

Blog

Case Page Image

Integration

Case Page Image

Contact Us

Plan Image

Revamping the current user interface of the platform

The design process started with creating the existing user interface and introducing  subtle improvements in the dark theme.

Concept Image

Feeds: Standardizing incoming data

  • A clear interface to understand the status of uploaded files, with ability to download or remove uploaded files.
  • Introduced the data mapping feature, allowing users to efficiently define rules, streamlining the process of standardizing incoming data.

Simplified running analytics

Improved the UI for users to easily customize and run analytics to generate visualizations for creating reports.

Concept Image
Concept Image

Enabling customized report generation

Optimized for data visualization and allowing customization for converting the reports into printable, standardized formats.

Introduced a feature to automating repetitive processes.

It became the most used feature by portfolio managers, leading to the inception of a self-serve feature.

Concept Image
Studio-Profiles

Self-serve tool to streamline data ingestion, running analytics and generating reports

A self-serve tool of the platform that automates data ingestion, running analytics and generating reports through an intuitive UI and basic SQL knowledge.
This tool was designed for data champions—users adept at running basic SQL and proficient in utilizing the platform. The goals was to empower such users in setting up analytics and automating report generation which was earlier done by the Alterest team.

User flow for the self serving feature

Drawing insights from contextual interviews with data champions—I developed a user journey map for the self-serve feature that would enable users to use various platform features to create workflows to generate reports.

Use flow Image

Designing the self serving feature

Based on the information architecture designed I created low-fidelity wireframes using Balsamiq, followed by designing high-fidelity prototypes used to conduct usability tests.

Usability Testing

Conducted a usability test with 5 participants, evaluating the following:

1. Users can find the relevant sections.
2. User interacts with the tabs below and navigates to visualization section.
3. How the users interact with the various features within visualizations.

Findings of the usability test

Design Image
Design Image
Design Image
⚠️ Issue: Users found the visualization window small

☑️ Solution: Add a layout feature that expands the visualization to the full screen.

⚠️ Issue: They felt that the code area is taking too much of the space.

☑️ Solution: To try different views for the tabs at the bottom, like "the inspect window option on browsers" or include them in the main window.

📝 Future plans
  • Resolve issues highlighted during the usability testing.
  • Try different layouts for better usage of the work-space.
  • Conduct more rounds of usability testing with updated designs.
👓 Reflection
Visit website
  • User testing is essential to understand user pain points and analysing the success of design solution.
  • Theming is important for a better user experience for users with varied demographics.
  • User interviews with internal stakeholders as well external stakeholders are important to get comrehensive insights into the needs, preferences, and pain points of the target audience, crucial for designing products that truly address their needs.

Tools :

Figma and Balsamiq.

Checkout my other projects

Denver zoo website revamp

Information architecture

UX research

UX evaluation for a website revamp to enhance user experience of planning and booking a visit to the zoo.

Read Case Study