Kicking things off

At Halo, the Dashboard was sacrosanct. Few observations had been made and continual research and adjustments had hardly been applied. For a few years, a lot of what made Halo valuable to our target audience of financial advisors within the market of products had been largely about what was under the hood--the APIs and Quantitative models that are used to find the best prices on investment products in ways only something like Halo could do.

There was a lot of design debt. In fact, the whole dashboard was design debt. It was a smorgasbord of panels and tiles that had been slapped onto it over time to chase various needs of the business when they arose, and as the company scaled, the product needed to scale with it.

I took on the initiative to completely redesign and re-strategize the Front Page of the Product™, and this case study documents how I went about it.

In most any software application, the actions taken by a user prompts some kind of reaction from the application, establishing a cause-and-effect pattern. This series of actions and reactions, occurring over various moments as a user interacts, lays down the interaction foundation that drives the core loop of engagement crucial to the success of any software product.

Focusing on these user actions allows us to develop experiences that cater to their preferences and needs. Measurements of various stats such as task completion, conversion rates, page views and feedback can provide insights into how our designs resonate with these real user interactions. Through observations and adjustments, we gradually achieve the company's goals.

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Who Are We Designing This For?

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Before pushing any pixels, my design process always starts with some variation of this question: who is the target audience, and what do we already know about them? Up until this point, very little was known about the dashboard and how it was used beyond simply the volume of users that land on it.

As a user type, financial advisors are notoriously difficult to gain the time and attention of. After all, these people make a living by selling their time. For our research, I started first with those who know our users best and interact with them weekly: the sales and support teams. This approach may not be as “organic” as fully fledged end-user research, this is the next best thing design teams can rely on as a proxy for users. They’re certainly much better positioned than anyone else in the org as it relates to the challenges that both our business and our platform is facing for our current users.

I started our exploratory research with these two broad categories of user type: the Regional Vice Presidents (sales and business needs) and our Financial Advisors (which will be further subdivided into roles)

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Keeping Things Open Ended at the Beginning

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When preparing for Subject Matter Expert interviews, I usually always start with a discussion guide. This ensures each participant is getting the same sets of questions, and responses can be tracked against. I make these discussion guides with intention. In this case, I needed to better understand both the current problems and current understanding of what the dashboard is, isn’t, could be or should be. Up until this point there had been no strategy on it, and no one person or line of business owned the Dashboard. No documentation existed. This was fintech dashboard archaeology.

What Problems Are We Trying to Solve?

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After the interviews were concluded, I’d interviewed for a broad range of roles across the business from sales, marketing, support, and product. It was sticky note galore. At this point I brought in our lead designer to assist with the synthesis process to start to sift the problems down to the essentials. I often describe this part as “where the sausage is made, and once we made it out the other side we arrived here:

The current Dashboard on our platform fails to effectively meet the diverse and specific needs of our users, ranging from novice advisors to experienced Regional Vice Presidents. Key issues include a cluttered interface with non-intuitive navigation, underutilized or poorly integrated features (such as 'Auctions', 'Halo Risk Analysis', and 'Portfolio Summary'), and a lack of personalization options that could otherwise help users streamline their workflow according to their individual preferences and tasks.

The Dashboard does not prominently display critical elements like 'Portfolio Summary' which is central to user daily activities, and it underemphasized educational resources crucial for both new users and regulatory requirements. Moreover, the rigid structure of the Dashboard prevents all users from customizing their interface, thereby hindering efficient access to the most relevant tools and information, such as specific trade ideas, calendar offerings, or the 'Watched Notes' feature. This leads to a suboptimal experience where users, particularly new advisors and those reliant on quick access to specific functionalities, can find the platform difficult to navigate or make effective use of, potentially impacting their operational efficiency and satisfaction with the platform.

This problem statement aims to highlight the need for a more customizable, intuitive, and user-focused Dashboard that aligns more closely with the various roles and expectations of all platform users.

Eventually, I was able to break down the “Financial advisor” user type into three essential roles:

Additionally, I needed to consider the Halo Relationship Advisor:

Each one will need a different kind of experience when first landing on the Halo Dashboard that meets a combination of their own needs and the needs of the business.

Exploring and Testing New Ideas

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Additionally, when I’m sharing my conceptual work with the stakeholders I’ve involved before, such as sales or product, “grey-boxed” mockups force the conversation and the feedback I take solely around the problem I’m trying to solve and the concept I’m developing to solve it. This prevents not only myself from getting distracted from non-essential details (at this point) like border-radius: 30px;, but it also prevents my team from getting distracted.

Once we can agree upon the problems to solve and an appropriate approach to solve for them, I can then move onto the high-fidelity screens to begin exploring how the concept looks and feels as well as how it fits into the rest of the product’s design system.

There are two groups of people (outside of internal design reviews) that continue to be essential to the feedback process, and I try to incorporate them as early into the design explorations as I can: the Engineering team and Product.

Engineering Team

I want to ensure that the solutions I’m moving forward on are technically feasible and that we have the resources available to make them happen. Pulling in leads for both the front-end and back-end teams while iterating on solutions ensures that we are moving towards a solution that can actually be built and delivered on a realistic timeline.

Product Leadership

In addition to pulling in engineering, I’m also making sure to schedule touch points with product managers and the head of product. This helps me ensure that I’m taking in and designing for the needs and constraints of what the business is trying to accomplish as it relates to how this new Dashboard looks and functions.

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High-Fidelity iterations and the final solution

Once all exploratory research is done, and I’ve done my best to align business and user goals and also finalized the conceptual mockups, I moved my design process into Figma. In figma I rapidly iterate on the UI itself--at this point we’ve settled on a concept and now the look and feel needs definition.

At this point the design reviews include much more collaboration with the front-end team to so they are aware of what needs to eventually be built and can add their technical input to help prevent scope creep.

Closing Thoughts and Outcomes

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1. User-Centric Research and Identification: I started with a deep dive into understanding your primary users—financial advisors—through interviews facilitated by sales and support teams. This helped in pinpointing the actual needs and challenges faced by different user groups.

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2. Clutter Reduction and Improved Navigation: The dashboard was redesigned to remove unnecessary clutter and improve the intuitiveness of navigation. This included streamlining features and improving visibility of key functionalities like the 'Portfolio Summary' which are critical for daily activities of the users.

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3. Customization and Personalization: I implemented features allowing both end-users and administrators to customize the dashboard to better serve their specific needs. This included personalization options that adapt the dashboard to the unique workflows of different roles, such as new advisors and Regional Vice Presidents.

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4. Role-Specific Features: The dashboard was tailored to include role-specific features and tools, enhancing daily workflow and increasing user engagement.

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5. Integration of Educational Tools: Educational content was integrated directly onto the dashboard to facilitate easier access and understanding, which is crucial for compliance and effective use of the platform’s features.

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Benefits to the Business

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1. Enhanced User Experience: The redesign led to a more intuitive and user-friendly interface, which is particularly beneficial for new users. This improves the overall satisfaction and efficiency of the financial advisors using the dashboard.

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2. Increased Operational Efficiency: By making the dashboard more intuitive and aligned with user roles, the platform now supports quicker and more efficient access to necessary tools and information. This directly impacts the productivity of users.

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3. Higher Engagement and Retention: Personalized and role-specific dashboard features foster a more engaging user experience, potentially increasing user retention and reducing turnover.

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4. Compliance and Educational Engagement: The inclusion of educational materials not only meets regulatory requirements but also helps users understand complex products and enhance their investment strategies, thereby adding value to their interactions with the platform.

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5. Scalability and Flexibility: The redesigned dashboard is more adaptable to changing business needs and scales better with the growth of the company, supporting a broader range of functionalities as needed.

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Overall, my redesign of the Halo Dashboard addressed significant design debts and user experience challenges, aligning the dashboard’s functionality more closely with the needs of its users and the strategic goals of the business. This transformation not only enhanced the operational effectiveness of the platform but also positioned it for better future adaptability and growth.

During the low fidelity concept testing part (where I did all my designs in Miro) there was a timeline concept that I was working with that I was quite a fan of--it was a very different take on what a traditional landing page or dashboard in the fintech context could be. Based primarily on some of the insights I had pulled from interviews, this timeline concept was based primarily around the chronological organization of what we call "portfolio events" which are essentially just updates on the price movements on investments, and users would scroll this page not unlike a social media feed. It's a more novel take, and something I suspect could have held weight, but I wasn't able to get it out of design reviews and into our target users hands. If I could go back and do this project again, I'd have advocated more for this idea.