Projects

Investment Technology

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The Product Vision

Connect is an investment decision platform designed to bring clarity to complex portfolio strategy. It empowers analysts and consultants to build data-driven client plans by centralizing manager research, performance metrics, and asset class intelligence into one cohesive system.

By connecting research, strategy, and reporting workflows, Connect enables more informed decisions, greater transparency, and stronger alignment across investment teams.

Business Context

Analysts were spending excessive time managing spreadsheets and consolidating reports instead of focusing on strategic analysis. The initiative aimed to create a scalable, reliable source of truth for manager research, asset class data, and reporting. By unifying these workflows into a single platform, Connect reduced data risk, improved information accessibility, and enabled more efficient, insight-driven decision-making.

In a few words…

The Challenge:
Connect was operating in a fragmented environment, disconnected data, inconsistent reporting logic, and siloed research workflows. Critical investment knowledge existed, but it was trapped in spreadsheets, manual processes, and team silos.

My Impact

I reframed the problem from a reporting issue to a systems challenge.

Aligned analysts, architects, engineers, and business stakeholders around a shared structure, Jira was my best friend.
Clarified ambiguous financial requirements into scalable product logic.
Shape the previous Design Sytem given to the company.
Designed structured workflows to reduce data risk and decision silos.

Result: A centralized, scalable decision platform that transformed fragmented processes into a reliable source of truth.

Users & Stakeholders Complexity

Connect served highly specialized users each optimizing for different priorities and different types of clients:

Analysts needed precision, flexibility, and deep performance visibility.
Consultants required clarity and narrative-ready insights for client conversations.
Reasearch focused on model integrity, assumptions, and long-term projections.
Admin users prioritized data governance, structure, and version control.

The tension wasn’t just usability it was alignment. 🥵

Each group defined “correct” differently. My role was to design a system that respected analytical depth, enabled flexibility, and remained scalable, while creating shared structure and clarity across teams.

Connect served highly specialized users each optimizing for different priorities and different types of clients:

Analysts needed precision, flexibility, and deep performance visibility.
Consultants required clarity and narrative-ready insights for client conversations.
Reasearch focused on model integrity, assumptions, and long-term projections.
Admin users prioritized data governance, structure, and version control.

The tension wasn’t just usability it was alignment. 🥵

Decision Trade-Offs & Constraints

Designing Connect meant navigating structural tensions that shaped the product:

Empowering strategic freedom while maintaining governance and oversight
Supporting client-specific strategies while building scalable, reusable architecture
Accelerating workflows without compromising data integrity
Translating complex financial logic into intuitive, usable experiences

Every decision required balancing user needs, business constraints, data integrity, and long-term scalability, I had to make decisions and design fast, thank you Figma Make . ☕️

Designing Connect meant navigating structural tensions that shaped the product:

Empowering strategic freedom while maintaining governance and oversight
Supporting client-specific strategies while building scalable, reusable architecture
Accelerating workflows without compromising data integrity
Translating complex financial logic into intuitive, usable experiences

Every decision required balancing user needs, business constraints, data integrity, and long-term scalability, I had to make decisions and design fast, thank you Figma Make . ☕️

The result was not just pretty screens but a clearer, more reliable system for investment decision-making.

Sounds easy but takes a lot from a Senior Lead Product Designer. 🚀

Discovery & Designs

This case study includes selected Design System components, product explorations, discovery work, presentations, and system diagrams, a curated glimpse into the broader strategic work behind Connect.

What Happens after launch?

How do we measure it?

What would V2 prioritize?

Did we change how the organization makes decisions?

So, What Did I learned?

A Lead Product Designer is not measured by a tool proficiency, but by the ability to navigate ambiguity, drive alignment, and reshape systems when needed. Tools execute ideas, leadership defines them.

During my time with Connect:

I became fluent in advanced financial terminology and performance modeling structures.
I learned to design for financial users who require precision and transparency, and adore excel.
I strengthened my ability to clarify ambiguity before it scaled, therefore documenting is key.
I developed deeper systems thinking, connecting data architecture, user workflows, and business goals.
I practiced influencing without authority across finance and engineering stakeholders.