During the process of resolving reported pain points from subscribers about applying complex filters on data analyses, my design team also identified related issues from other stakeholders. Working through technical constraints, we produced a new watchlist feature and updated the homepage. Subscribers can save their filtered analyses and access them quickly via the new homepage. Internal teams also gained access to subscriber insights through a new user analytic source created with this feature.
User research (proxy)
Interaction design
UI design
1 Product manager
1 Front-end SWE
& more
4 weeks
2019
Web
The company provides data sets on consumer card transactions, which can be used to discover and track trends on consumer spending habits at specific companies, brands, and entities. Hedge fund managers, private equity managers, and market data analysts are examples of subscribers that use this data to support their investment or business theses.
The web portal grants subscribers access to interactive charts which they can edity to display specific segments or time periods. These charts are updated daily as new card transactions are added to the dataset, which will need to be updated.
Subscribers to this product are specialists in data analysis, financial modeling and forecasting. They use the data to support their proposals, such assessing the risk of investments, or providing evidence of the potential of a new business direction.
A subscriber shared a pain point with our client success manager: to access a complex analysis, he has to type and select more than 20 company names each time. Other client success managers and support managers also received corroborating feedback, including some subscribers resorting to using browser bookmarks.
Through stakeholder discussions, the product and data analysis creation teams noted that they do not know how subscribers were cross-referencing the different analyses available in the product. This was because subscribers were reluctant to divulge their methods, hence client success managers were cautious to engage users for product discovery.
User research (via proxy)
Contextual research
Wireframing
User flow analysis
Stakeholder feedback
Design system integration
Hi-fidelity mockups
Setup usage analytics
Due to company policy, the design team did not have direct access to users. We spoke to client success managers and client support managers in lieu of the subscribers. Through their past experiences with the subscribers, we learnt that:
Subscribers can apply many filters for an analysis, which becomes a cumbersome task when repeated.
Set up a convenient method to save and load complex filters settings.
Subscribers check various analyses (with filters) routinely for a thesis.
Enable subscribers to access all their customised analyses with minimal clicks.
Usage analytics showed how subscribers used each analysis, but not how they use multiple analyses.
Set up new analytics source(s) that provide insight into how subscribers use multiple analyses.
With the intended approaches in mind, the goal is to provide a way for subscribers to take 'snapshots' of the analyses they have customised, and provide an avenue to access these 'snapshots' that will always be up-to-date.
We worked with client success managers and client support managers that served as user proxies to assess the odds of user acceptance of our concepts, and then with other software engineers to ensure that the concepts were feasible within the project timeframe.
Through review sessions with other designers, design decisions were made with consideration of existing features and future plans. This was done to maintain consistency in the product experience, whether it is in navigating the site or the icons used to represent functionality.
Once subscribers load the charts they want to track, they can save and name it in matter of seconds.
Replacing a previous 'design' that was mostly irrelevant, introducing the watchlist feature on the homepage provides greater visibility and encourages user adoption. Due to technological constraints, the best solution was to enable subscribers to open all their saved analyses in a group at once as new tabs with a click of a button.
A new page for subscribers to modify their watchlists. Subscribers can re-arrange, rename, and delete their watchlists and items here.
Time-sensitive filters now come with the option of rolling periods, providing accurate data without the hassle of frequent edits.
