Financial & Legal
I have spent many years of my career dedicated to creating better experiences for Lawyers, Investment Bankers, and Financial Analysts. Due to the vertical's proprietary nature, I can only share a fraction of the outcomes that teams have driven.
When leading Watson for Finance, I managed a 40+ team of designers across five countries. At Intapp, I grew a team of four to over 15 in 18 months while unifying Legal and Financial CRM experiences from different acquisition companies.
Intapp Platform Consolidation
Role
Design Director
Objective
Unify the UX and UI for two acquisition company CRM offerings, each with a different user base—DealCloud for Private Equity and OnePlace for Legal. And do so without causing churn with legacy users of either offering.
Context
CRMs are inherently complex software experiences. Intapp had merged the back-end code, but was incurring cost to support two front-end experiences.
Outcome
Focusing on evolution rather than revolution, designers conducted user research on UX while driving changes to type scale, color, styling, and a few high-value areas of UX. This approach established a foundation to drive more substantial change in future releases.
Watson for Finance Design Language
Role
Design Director
Objective
Apply the Watson for Finance Design Language to unify the look and feel of the portfolio.
Context
The IBM portfolio for all things Financial and Legal was the result of multiple acquisitions made over a decade. The UX and UI of the product experiences were very different.
Outcome
Successful application of the Design Language across the portfolio. Delivering a better UI accelerated the business conversation around doing so for the same products’ UX.
Watson Planning Analytics Platform Redesign
Role
Design Strategy Director
Objective
Collaborate with Development and Product Management to craft a vision for the future of Planning Analytics that embraced the complexity of its use cases while integrating AI.
Context
IBM Planning Analytics was a legacy Cognos application that provided an opportunity for redesign to become a true cloud offering and integrate AI in a meaningful way.
Outcome
A comprehensive redesign of the experience that Development and Product Management utilized for estimation purposes.
Legacy Financial & Legal Applications
Role
Design Strategy Director
Objective
Improve experiences across a multi-product portfolio that included multiple acquisition company offerings and legacy applications that needed to migrate to the cloud.
Context
Some products were constrained to visual-only, UI-centric changes, while others had the development capacity to accommodate both UI and UX changes.
Outcome
Even application of the Watson Analytics Design Language across the portfolio. Focused improvements to UX took place on high-value products that were moving to the cloud.
Watson for Anti-Money Laundering
Role
Design Director
Objective
Conduct research with Promontory Financial Group, a recent acquisition company, to identify opportunities for a new product offering in the AML/KYC space.
Context
IBM purchased Promontory Financial Group to acquire market share and bolster its reputation in the Financial and Legal space. Leadership wanted to explore converting custom code and bespoke processes into a scalable offering.
Outcome
Three rounds of concept research and multiple multi-disciplinary workshops resulted in a concept that was validated by Subject Matter Experts and prospective Users and Buyers. A net-new offering launched in record time.
Financial Operations & Performance Management Platform Vision
Role
Design Director
Objective
Create a future-facing vision for the entirety of the FOPM (Financial Operations and Performance Management) portfolio, consisting of product experiences for multiple users.
Context
The FOPM portfolio had multiple products that addressed the needs and goals of many financial users. The resulting product portfolio was confusing for buyers and users.
Outcome
The resulting concept car included both mobile device and desktop experiences. The approach to the product, a Financial Management Hub, is currently in development today.