Enterprise-level, real-time data from multiple sources, instantly accessed, no more hunting.
—
A single-source-of-truth of unifying insights speak volumes: 56% iPad growth in just 1.5 years and 100,000 meetings
The Problem Statement
Problem framing
Best practices
Design principles
Within a strictly regulated financial environment my clients use dashboards data every day.
Users
Advice
Quotes
Investment
As the world’s largest wealth manager, catering to affluent clients requires exclusive online services like advice, quotes and investment strategies, delivered digitally. Internal systems application empower the two principal user groups;
- Customer Consultant Associates
- Customer Consultant* (CCA’s/CC’s),
Assembling these customer meetings takes time, accessing strictly private data to provide a complete, competitive and professional service requires a tailored and specialised tool – of which the Customer Meeting App* is the bank’s primary channel.
What are the driving factors for developing a dashboard?
Strategic insights
Information architecture
Single source
Imagine client meetings where crucial information is instantly accessible, scattered data unified, and time spent hunting replaced by strategic insights. This is the potentially transformative power of the Customer Meeting App’s dashboard, built around three “must-have” features:
- Single point of access for disparate data
Instead of opening various applications, interfaces, or online databases, the CCA’s/CC’s have a real-time dashboard. - Broad overview with drill down capabilities
A dynamic dashboard, digital documentation and secure access. - Easier, faster, sign source of truth
Consolidated statistic, statues displays, contextual information, and ‘Edit’ functionality placed intelligently for quick consumption.
Achieving speed, clarity, and brand harmony
Journey
Processes
Re-imagine
Problem and Opportunity
The existing offering had become redundant, with processes and previous ways of working no longer relevant or appropriate. The client required the seamless integration of data from third-party repositories and a significantly improved user journey. This presented a clear opportunity to re-imagine the complete ‘Create a Customer Meeting’ user journey.
Users do drive requirements, but in business there is another controlling factor. To sync the ‘Create a Customer Meeting’ , the ‘Adding account numbers’ journey there was a further requirement;.
Funding
Dashboard design best practice
There are 3 dashboard design principles that are drove decisions and are considered best practice:
1. Five-second insight
Funding was a principal driver for this project. Empowering a more intuitive process to adding customer data (account numbers, quote links, investment profile links, and upcoming future services) at a glance was key to the baseline UX.
2. Inverted pyramid layout
The inverted triangle displays the most significant insights on the top, trends in the middle, and granular details towards the bottom.
3. Brand champion and ensure DS achievability
Championing user-centred design principles that both upheld the organisation’s values and maintained consistency across applications was a challenge. Without a dedicated UX stakeholder, negotiating the implementation of new global Design System within budget and development constraints proved demanding.
Reimagining Client Meetings
Scalability
Visual Hierarchy
Visual Design
To reiterate the design process, I went through the following:
- Step 1 – Start with the user needs
The foundation of successful design. Streamlining the preparation of a meeting, and principally future proofing the Create a Meeting process with a scalable UI that can seamlessly integrate new data repositories, ensuring long-term flexibility. - Step 2 – Segment the experience in to ‘zones’
The on-screen real estate delivers a quick look experience prioritising top from bottom. - Step 3 – Test and Challenge through Prototyping
Visualising up to 12 users’ journeys leads for better understanding and smoother development. Developers also need reassurance that this would be a boxed development and will not impact working code.
Driving Discovery UX within a challenging Agile environment
Hierarchy
F-pattern
Low-fidelity prototyping
Early sketches are crucial: They reveal the potential of a dashboard, emphasising hierarchy through top-down, left-to-right user scanning patterns. Grouping key data, utilising white space, and enabling light touch drill-down are key drivers.
Scope and hierarchy: Initial sketches focus on what’s important, pushing a hierarchical arrangement that guides the user’s eye. Data is prioritised with ‘glance-access’ to preview Meeting Name at the top, followed by Last Modified and owner information.
Chain of command flow: Expanding on the ‘Mini’ concept, this ‘Maxi’ Dashboard version offers the full experience. Enabling the CCA’s/CC’s to very quickly assess top level meeting status and drill-down to Privacy Setting, customer ID photos, and Mode of Contact.
Sketching a tailored experience
What is in scope: These initial sketches start to show the power of a dashboard. Pushing the hierarchical arrangement, the user’s eyes organically concentrate from top to bottom, left to right. We have the data, so embracing the Meeting Name and grouping the Last Modified through to the Meeting Owner data just makes sense.
Estimation sketches
In Agile, pre-estimation is an important ceremony before sprinting. An efficient method of conveying your UI is to sketch and quickly map out the flow, the user interactions and where the final CTAs might be..
Realising a final solution
A conceptual dashboard with multiple layers.
The final solution solved both the scalability problem, providing easy access to account numbers, the ability to add other account numbers, visibility on the meeting date and time, and the meeting status and who is the meeting organiser, all there front-of-stall for the user. Complete transparency on meeting detail, including location, meeting language an whether the meeting has typed notes and freehand notes plus special features including packaging the meeting contents ready to send the customer and associating the meeting with a customer ID.
A new dashboard suite is here;
- Highly Readable
- Inherently Scalable
- Data-Driven
Design Trade-Offs
Business Reality
ROI
Inverted Pyramid
One key factor in the development (and acceptance) of this new radical design was ‘achievability’. Funding in a key developmental constraint with financial services, without it a project will not leave the ground – designing with business realities is a UX key skill.
Account number drill-down
The UX was sold into the business as streamlining the ‘Create a Meeting’ user flow at a single glance, adding value at the advisory level.
There are four (4) account numbers associated with this meeting. The user is able to hover, edit or launch a pop-over dialog box to create an account specific meeting from this functionality.
Hierarchical details
Providing a tiered ‘inverted triangle’ proved to be an excellent facilitator for the single-point of truth concept. Employing hover state ‘tooltip’ functionality allowed for a broad overview with drill-down capabilities.
Global Digital Shift
Adoption
Impact
Massive UX Reach
40
Countries
190
Offices
100k
100,000 meetings
The bank is present in more than 40 countries with approximately half of their 190 offices are in western Europe, where half of the Customer Meeting App meetings are delivered on the iPad. This is a phenomenal growth from 8% to 56% worldwide in the last 18 months.
100,000 meetings prepared and delivered via the application each year. A true revolution!
*Names changed to protect the innocent
