Wealth management teams waited weeks on developers and vendors for client reports. I designed a self-serve insights platform that delivers custom reports in seconds and gives back up to 7 days of manual work.
I turned a scattered, request-driven reporting process into a self-serve insights platform for Morgan Stanley's wealth management professionals. What started as a concept became an MVP that puts real-time insights and visualizations in their hands, so decisions happen faster and with more confidence.
Advisors and managers depended on development teams and vendors for client data, which arrived as fragmented Excel files stored in different places. Every report meant manual consolidation: slow, error-prone and a poor way to spot opportunities.
I led UX strategy, research and design, taking the product from initial discovery to the launch of a fully functional MVP.
The MVP shipped with virtually no usability issues, thanks to a truly human-centered process
Custom business reports on demand, with no developer requests
Data becomes a visual story in seconds instead of hours of manual Excel work
Business performance trends spotted in seconds
I mapped the current process end to end around one high-value use case: acquiring Virtual Advisor clients, individuals with $50,000 to $499,000 in liquid assets. One-on-one interviews showed me every step users took to reach that goal, and exactly where the friction was.
Users constantly merged and added columns across Excel spreadsheets just to make the data usable, which cost time and invited errors.
Shareworks data depended on manual developer effort and was often stale.
Updating client financial information meant a manual upload, adding another step and another chance for error.
Automate the cleaning, consolidation and customization of the data, then put it behind an intuitive UI. Users tailor the information to what they need and act on it right away.
This team had never worked with personas. Interviews across each user group gave me distinct personas with their own goals, pain points and opportunities, and made sure the solution served every workflow, not just the loudest one.
With a few months to design, I focused on a feasible MVP that met the essential business needs, built to scale into a suite of wealth management products for strategic business users and branch managers. The business chose to start with Financial Advisor (FA) and Virtual Advisor (VA) data.
I sketched layouts around how users search for and extract data, matching their mental models. The priority was an information architecture that made filtering fast and accurate, because users mainly compare a specific period (a week, month or quarter) against data since inception.
Users and product stakeholders chose Version A for its readability, so I refined and built on that direction.
I brought the design to life with interactive elements, prioritizing the filters and features that mattered most for the MVP. Every feature traced back to a user requirement, and I tested in stages, refining each component until the experience converged.
This team grew to trust the UX process. It took some early education and working through pushback, but it became a strong partnership. Working closely with users at every iteration, I designed a scalable, modular system that absorbs new enhancements easily.
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