RiskOrigins
The Project
This is a re-design of the RiskOrigins platform to produce a responsive and intuitive interface for diverse teams in the banks and financial institutions to make smarter credit risk decisions, increase operational efficiencies and bring more profitable transactions.
My role at RiskOrigins:- Perform desk research to understand existing workflow and identifying potential user's pain points.
- Designing proof-of-concepts for Dashboards and Entity Management module to get buy-ins from stakeholders.
- Strategise and design the user interactions through rapid prototyping to help stakeholders visualise design concepts.
Challenges
- Understanding the financial industry was new, especially on the complex credit decisioning and loan origination context.
- New technologies such as Angular JS, D3, Go JS had technical limitations.
- Lack of conversations with actual end users.
Gaining Knowledge
I started gaining knowledge on the credit decisioning and loan origination domain through orientations, trainings and knowledge sharing amongst colleagues. After the UX evaluation of the current interface, I gathered insights on the current design challenges.
I was subsequently tasked to re-design the Home Dashboard and the foundational module in RiskOrigins - Entity Management. Entity Management is a module where the Relationship Manager creates an Entity, defines and builds legal/credit relationship structure and provides allocation within a relationship.
Research and Analysis
Research activities were important before kickoff of any project. Hence, I started off with UX research activities:
- Depicted the full system sitemap through a UX Blueprint, evaluated UI issues and potential optimization opportunities.
- Measuring the impact of the existing system through a User Journey Map, quantifying the number of steps and screens involved.
- As there was no access to actual end users, I gathered requirements and persona's profiles and behaviours through interviews with product managers, business analysts and subject matter experts.
Design Strategy
With the research gathered, I planned and derived the design strategy with the 'CASE' design principles.
Proof of Concepts
Note: Screenshots below are high-fidelity prototype mockups and may not represent the actual implementation.
Dashboard
Ideation was done through Axure prototyping which helped the team to visualise screen interactions and key functionalities.
Majority of the stakeholders were concerned that the existing Home Dashboard lacked of information to present key performance trackers, overview of task status, critical alerts and other key performance indicators (KPIs).
Some were also hoping for a more personalized dashboard for different user types (i.e. Relationship Manager, Credit Analyst, Portfolio Manager). The dashboard was re-designed to address these concerns by presenting an overview of deals and other KPIs to aid the target audiences in tracking and deciding what tasks to react upon.
Entity Management
There were several challenges on technical aspects due to changes in coding structures. Design alternatives were proposed to handle quick changes that will not impact the backend system structure.
The re-design focused on the following:
- Forms: Making form controls smarter through auto-suggestions and providing defaults to minimise input effort.
- Tables: Inline adding and editing in table view for faster task completion.
- Charts: Direct data manipulation in entity chart and intuitive chart navigation for efficient building of hierarchy relationships.
- Sliding panels: Popup dialog were replaced by sliding panels to reduce intrusiveness and present a more seamless interaction.
Translating to Actual Implementation
- Collaborated with front-end engineer by explaining design concept and oversee both interaction and visual design.
- Understand technical built capabilities to find design and technical feasibility fit.
- Continuously iterate design and ensure implementation comply with prototype design and user's needs.
Outcomes
The first release of Entity Management module was successfully launched and onboarded new customers. Design patterns, guidelines and prototyping kit was defined along the way which acts as a foundation for the team to efficiently come up with other module design.