BMO Business dashboard

Overview

Project intake

The Client Compass team was building a business dashboard to assist relationship managers in overseeing small and medium-sized business portfolios. (2021)

My role

Product Designer: Designed the complete end-to-end user experience for the responsive Client Compass business dashboard.

Timeline

Total project time was 6 months, design timeline was 4 weeks.

Project goal

Increase usability

Currently, relationship managers (and others) rely on six legacy systems to fulfill their daily tasks, resulting in significant usability issues.

Efficiency for daily task

Due to the constant back-and-forth between different systems, work efficiency is compromised. Building an all-in-one tool for users is essential to address this issue.

Branch technology upgrade

BMO branches were upgrading their technology systems to prioritize mobile and tablet functionality, leading to a lack of support for legacy systems.

How can we enable users to efficiently manage their daily tasks?

Research

To pinpoint the opportunity and align with our goal, I undertook the following steps.

Understanding the project

Conducted workshops with product owners and business partners to assess current task workflows.
Analyzed previous legacy designs and flow to comprehend past UI design decisions.
Led brainstorming sessions with the design team to explore opportunities for improving the current UI product.

Understanding the user

Initiated discussions with key stakeholders and relationship managers.
Conducted user interviews with key user groups.
Summarized user pain points and created journey maps.
Crafted personas based on user characteristics to provide insights into user needs for the team.

Redesigning dashboard

User needs

In discussions with three working relationship managers to understand their daily experiences with the system, several needs were identified:

The ability to quickly find tasks on their to-do list at a glance.
Transparency into quarterly leads targets.
Clear guidance on which tasks to prioritize each day.
The capability to check tasks on hand while on the go, both for short-term and long-term needs.

Key design decisions for the dashboard

Here are some design features I incorporated to meet the users' needs:

Provided a high-level summary of all tasks at a glance.
Included visual and numerical progress indicators to help relationship managers track their tasks.
Adopted a mobile-first approach to design.
Prioritized leads based on decision-making criteria such as amount or length of delay.
Ensured scalability for future implementation.

The before and after

Before

Unintuitive UI and lack of actionable information and clear organization.

After

With the updated design, relationship managers can quickly assess their tasks, understand their priority, and decide their next steps. The tile order reflects urgency and user prioritization, while key information, like lead amount, is included to enhance usability. This detail proved crucial in lead decision-making, according to user feedback.

Design the overdraft flow

One critical daily task for relationship managers is reviewing overdraft items. This involves assessing situations where businesses in their portfolio spend beyond their means. Managers must decide whether to approve transactions, pending client payments afterward.

Understanding the process with our user

How is the current process? What are their pain points and needs? After creating a journey map to visualize the entire process, it became evident that the current journey is quite frustrating for relationship managers. They are required to review and address all overdraft items by noon each day. This process involves extensive back-and-forth searching to gather client information, which is essential for making informed decisions.

My goal for the design is to:

Ensure that all essential information is readily surfaced within the flow, minimizing the need to search in different places and saving valuable time.
Facilitate quick and efficient decision-making to keep tasks moving along smoothly.

Envisioning the process flow

I organized several meetings with stakeholders and the user group to brainstorm the most feasible and streamlined process flow. We mapped out timelines and identified roles relevant to the overdraft process.

Through collaborative efforts, we managed to condense the original 7-step process into a more efficient 4-step process.

The high-level user flow

With the process now established, the next step is to delineate the new user flow.

Key design decisions

Focus on client or account level information

In the initial design phase, I created three low-fidelity versions of the flow focusing on account view, transaction view, and client view, as overdrafts typically occur at the account transaction level.

Following user testing, key insights emerged:

Client view is more intuitive as many decisions occur during client conversations at the profile level. Most decisions are influenced by client history and risk level.
It is crucial to have a streamlined client > account > transaction drill-down for relationship managers, ensuring efficient comprehension of the situation.
Minimizing clicks to access information enhances usability.

Drafted account view option

Drafted transaction view option

The first draft of flow

After aligning with both users and stakeholders, the initial flow draft was designed.

Final UI

The final UI is the result of several rounds of user interviews and testing, ensuring alignment with brand guidelines and a mobile-first approach.

• Quick access to daily task on the go • Easy task navigation • Simple action for tasks