Part of a larger body of work for Goldman Sachs' Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) team, a scenario builder and comparison tool created a unique experience that proved interest in future work with Code and Theory.
With my Associate Director, I led the interaction design team for one of Code & Theory’s biggest clients, Goldman Sachs. Our core objective was to build a platform for financial advisors to create new Separately Managed Accounts (SMA) investments for their clients, which included equity and fixed income offerings. Since this was a large task, in parallel, I owned a few marketing projects to garner more interest from advisors. The most fruitful being a new consumer-facing scenario builder, Municipal Portfolio Solutions Tool, which was mainly positioned to prove interest generally in interactive tools. This would feed into the broader momentum for other Goldman Sachs projects.
Though Goldman Sachs was last to market with this type of scenario builder tool, we were afforded a wide array of competitor approaches to gain insight during our initial audit. This allowed us to innovate within the framework of what we knew did and didn’t work, and kickstarted our process of building requirements with the understanding that this tool will need to feed into the future platform.
We quickly realized that our tool could provide value that none of the competitors did: the ability to compare multiple portfolios in a single view. Beyond that, our advisory tool could also feed data visualizations and capabilities to a more feature-rich version, on the logged-in side of the future platform.
Our wireframe-building phase was challenging, in that the business and development teams had not yet locked their requirements. To meet this challenge, we reused components introduced in previous projects, allowing us to quickly develop several different options. This helped move our stakeholders from the paralysis of a blank page, toward something they could begin to embrace.
As we shifted into a more iterative phase, we realized that we would be developing atop shifting sands. Requirements could change from day to day, and stakeholder reviews would often end with more questions than answers. In short, as a design team, we needed to embody agility.
Our designs went through quite the journey. Our Day 1 MVP lacked our proposed key differentiator of multiple portfolios due to limitations with the Development Team. Through the rapid iterations, we were able to implement that feature, gain stakeholder support, accommodate a few more final curveballs, and polish up the interactions to our liking, all while priming the tool to scale both behind-the-password and on the consumer-facing side.
By pushing for elements that would set this tool apart, and reconciling stakeholder needs with development limitations, we launched a product that makes Goldman Sachs clearly distinct when compared to its competitors.
Through its rapid and continued adoption in the marketplace, we were also able to prove interest in tools like this, ensuring that Goldman would remain a satisfied client at Code & Theory.
I've had the privilege to work with a diverse range of clients and teams, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.
