Equity Compensation Planner
A tool that enables stock planners to have an insight-driven conversation with clients.
The Challenge
The stock plan services team was using a third-party tool to model employer provided stock options for their clients. Since the tool lived outside the company’s digital ecosystem, it made the stock planner’s workflow very complex and tedious. The business decided to build an application in-house to optimize the workflow and improve the planner efficiency. I was brought to design this application and the printed report output that was referenced in client meetings.
My Role
I was responsible for the experience strategy, information architecture, data visualization and stakeholder engagement. I worked alongside a visual designer and also partnered with a user researcher to validate the user experience of the application and report.
The Solution
the REport Reboot
Starting with the original report in hand, I documented all stories and insights that planners wanted to share with their clients. I then designed various charts and visualizations that aligned with those insights. A quick usability test with planners, helped validate the charts, content and the overall flow of the report. Takeaways from the usability session were iteratively incorporated into the report. Once the business signed off on the concepts, the visual designer was brought in to align the report style with the wealth management team’s brand guidelines.
The Client Report: Before and After the redesign
Equity Compensation Planner
Once the report output was ready to be handed over the enterprise publishing team, I shifted focus to work on the application - Equity Compensation Planner. I started off by creating a planner’s task flow. Once this flow was confirmed by the stakeholder, we mapped various data elements that need to be included in the user interface.
Planner’s task flow Prior to client meeting
Task flow
With this information at hand, I quickly jumped into Figma to create the UI screens. To make sure I was not going down a rabbit-hole, I setup a bi-weekly review session with a couple of stock planners to validate my interactive prototype.
Working iteratively through design and research helped arrive at a point where the stakeholders were comfortable with the proposed experience. I then handed over my designs to the visual designer to create detail specs for the various screens.