Alterest is a B2B SaaS fintech platform. Mainly used for portfolio and asset management, data modelling and auditing, business process management, and regulatory and compliance management.
The primary goal was to lead the design processes for the software revamp of this platform and design a self-serving tool for automating the generation of reports.
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
Figma and Balsamiq.
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 when using the platform.
Overview of the process:
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.
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 utilized features.
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.
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.
This also helped us understand what kind of modularity and features would be needed by the customer to use a self-serving feature.
Users had trouble finding information quickly because of complicated navigation, causing frustration and inefficiency. Many users only used a part of the platform and hardly explored other features.
Users would only use certain features and follow a set process to generate reports. We could identify the happy path for our primary users and subsequently outlined the essential features needed to introduce a self-serve option.
Identified inconsistencies in the platform and problems such as confusing navigation, or missing features such as search and filter, and found unnecessary features for certain users.
Discovered that many of our users especially portfolio managers would prefer a light theme instead of the existing dark theme.
Through the discovery process we also uncovered three primary roles within our various customers and uncovered how they used 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: These include creating design tokens such as its logo, color palette, shadows, typography, and graph colors as well as how they should be used in various contexts.
The aim was to design a reusable and user-friendly component library, comprising of essential UI elements. Here is what I did:
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.
I aimed to achieve the following outcomes by introducing light theme:
The design process started with creating the existing user interface and introducing subtle improvements in the dark theme.
Introduced a clear interface that provides visibility into uploaded files' statuses and introduced the data mapping feature, allowing users to efficiently define mapping rules, preview mapped data, and make adjustments, streamlining the process of standardizing incoming data for better data integrity and user productivity.
Enabled users to run analytics and generate visualizations for creating reports. Allowed for loan level analysis, balance sheet management, credit monitoring, and management.
The design for the reports module was updated, to be more visually appealing for data visualization. Guidelines were established for converting the reports into printable, standardized formats.
I introduced a feature that automated data inception, analytics, and report generation pipeline for repetitive company processes. It was based on user insights and became the most used feature, leading to creating of a self-serve feature on the platform that the companies could themselves use to create their own workflows.
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. This tool was designed to empower such users in setting up analytics and automating report generation.
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.
Based on the information architecture designed I created low fidelity wirframes using Balsamiq, follwed by designing high-fidelity protypes used to conduct usability tests.
Conducted 5 usability tests with the following success metrics:
User can find relevant sections
User scrolls down on visualization
Users understand how to use the various features within visualizations
