Advent is a leader in Financial Tech for making Portfolio Management and Accounting Software. As a Senior Interaction Designer, I led the UX/UI design of a few products from 2014-2015 (Advent's transition to the cloud).
Built from the ground up, Advent’s “Genesis” product is a cloud-based portfolio rebalancing and order management tool for wealth management firms.
My role: Lead UX/UI Designer, User Research, Information Architecture, System Design, Prototyping.
Below, an early whiteboard sketch and subsequent wireframe for the dashboard. The goal here was to provide users with a glance-able overview, quick access to the most important portfolio data and key performance indicators (KPI’s) related to rebalancing.
Our goal was to streamline the management of portfolios that track to investment models, automating many time-consuming tasks that are currently done manually.
Above: the seed of an idea and the resulting wireframe, for building a model's hierarchy.
Model creation presented some fun, complex challenges:
• Enabling flexible model creation, where any node can be a model
• Allowing investment advisors to rebalance any account, or group of accounts across multiple custodians (“batching”)
Access to users for discovery research was another challenge. We relied on fellow employees who had previously worked as portfolio managers. We also reached out to our marketing team, who knew the Portfolio Manager customers well enough to answer our questions.
Also, as we neared Alpha, Advent got acquired by SS&C, which created a lot of churn. Fortunately, our project was one of a few that were embraced by our new executive sponsors (at a time when many projects were getting axed).
Above: as a side project, I collaborated closely with our UX Director to transform our end-to-end design methodology from waterfall to agile. This shows the process we worked out, together with the other team leads.
I was able to ramp up quickly. My prior experience at JPMorgan Chase (designing personal finance and investment tools) helped me understand the complexity, jargon, and envision appropriate UX/UI solutions.
Also, our product manager and I collaborated daily on end-to-end wire-flows that depicted an investments advisor performing eight core functions for rebalancing portfolios.
Above, user research: Orgsonas are similar to personas, but depict an organization (rather than a single user).
USER RESEARCH:
Since access to actual users was a challenge, fellow employees and our marketing team provided insights into the types of firms that our persona, "Porter Portfolio Manager" might work in:
RIAs: "Complexity and entrenched workflows make change difficult even if these types of firms buy into the concept of using technology to scale. While firms may have adopted different “best in class” tech, they often struggle with integration, using what they have, and managing multiple vendors."
Breakaways: “Unlike existing RIAs, the breakaways are less familiar with managing technology and the operational issues involved with running an RIA, and are often unclear on how it all will work in 'the new world.'”
IBDs & Hybrids “Roughly the same size as the RIA market (+$2-3T). IBDs look similar to RIAs but often lack the quality technology tools to support their growth. IBDs however present unique challenges due to their size, structure and the fact that they often don’t control the decisions of the independent reps.”
A group card-sorting workshop (affinity grouping) led us to the beginnings of our content structure...
Based on the above research, we mapped content "nuggets" into "buckets" which informed our next steps:
• Lay out the IA (information architecture)
• Get more granular with our spec / requirements
• Begin scoping (pre-alpha, alpha, beta...)
DEFINE:
Requirements & Features:
• Flexible model creation: any node can be a model
• Models consist of: securities, classes, models of models
• Top-down/bottom-up modeling, relative & absolute targets
• 1-to-n tiers security classes & hierarchies support any model
• Efficient on-boarding of models and other data
• Visualizations and workflows configurable by user
• Powerful grid for: complex calculations, editing, validation
• Global: rebalance and trade in multiple currencies
• Cloud-power: scaling supports large volumes & portfolio sizes
• Exception-based monitoring, proactively identify opportunities
• Advanced optimizer; multi-dimensional optimization
• Integration w market data for intraday, real-time updates
• Trade order connectivity via trade files, FIX, OMS integration
• Custom portfolio creation for analysis and rebalancing
DESIGN, ITERATE AND TEST:
We first designed system level architecture (IA / information architecture), before moving into page-level architecture (end-to-end wire-flows).
Before moving into page-level architecture (end-to-end wire-flows), we nailed down our page templates, identifying screen regions, which condition the user to expect certain kinds of information to consistently appear is dedicated areas. This adds to predictability, accelerating tasks over time, and also adds to perceived stability of the system.
Working closely with our lead engineer, I shared feedback on Invision almost daily. This allowed us to track conversations in one centralized place, with accompanying visuals. Here we're discussing differences between the design on the left, (a high-fidelity wireframe) and the current build on the right.
We met once per week to align with another team that was working on platform design (and UX patterns) for the larger suite of tools called Advent Direct. (Genesis was only one of many tools within Advent Direct.)
We circled back to our Genesis team re:
• Identifying use cases that belong on desktop, versus mobile
• Creating models and orders should be optimized for desktop
• Users should be able to glance at dashboards on mobile
• Responsive behavior and hierarchy of tiles; tile behavior
In the Model Editor, invoking sub-actions by hovering on a row.
In the Model Editor, setting tolerances for drift; the affected columnar data update in real time (see spinners).
Batch trading, viewing tabular data.
Above: Batch trading, viewing Order Details.
In November 2016 Advent/SS&C released beta. Four investment firms have signed up as paying Beta customers, and counting. This new powerful product is helping Advent land some big clients. The full product release is expected in mid 2017.
Toward the end of this project, our team had earned a reputation for being innovative in charting the best practices of a) product and design partnering closely to define the product’s vision before beginning agile sprints. And b) creating end-to-end wire-flows based on core use cases, in order to define a complete product.
Because of our approach and process, we were able to design a product that was very well received internally at Advent — and by a growing number customers as well.