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UX Research and Design for State Street's Tri-Party Collateral Management Platform
Project Background
State Street aimed to position itself as a Triparty service provider in the financial market, aligning with its strategic expansion of the collateral management program. Efficient collateral management was crucial for State Street's clients and prospects, not only from a regulatory perspective but also for liquidity planning and risk management.
Our UX team was tasked with designing this portal from the ground up, ensuring it enabled clients to optimize collateral usage and efficiency when posting margin to meet UMR initial and variation margin requirements.
My Role: UX Research Lead
I had the opportunity to lead the user research efforts for this project, working closely with stakeholders, product owners, developers, and operational users. I conducted user and SME interviews to identify key pain points and user needs, followed by analyzing the research data to produce actionable insights and various artifacts that helped define user flows and wireframes. Additionally, I moderated usability testing sessions and collaborated on prototyping and visual design.
Project Overview
Process and Activities
UX Research Methods Used:
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Internal stakeholder interviews to define research goals
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Competitor analysis & product demos
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Remote moderated user interviews
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Data analysis and synthesis: (Note Taking, Thematic Analysis, Generating Insights)
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Remote moderated usability testing (Formative)
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Usability metrics benchmarking (Summative)
User Interview Study Plan Dashboard
We utilized this dashboard to present key details of the proposed research study to stakeholders, including the research statement, objectives, and other important elements. Given the time zone differences and the ongoing COVID situation, we scheduled and conducted all interview sessions remotely via Webex and Zoom.
User Interview Script
We held product review sessions with stakeholders to understand the current state and identify experience gaps based on user insight assumptions. I developed the user interview script informed by these insights and the initial project requirements.
Script Theme Breakdown
Conducting the Interviews
We identified stakeholders across the product spectrum, including business, strategy, developers, and other key areas. I moderated the sessions, and the team assisted with scheduling, following up with users, and taking notes during the interviews. Each session lasted one hour, and when we couldn't cover all the topics within that timeframe, we arranged follow-up sessions.
Compiling SME Profiles
Before the interviews, we sent out role clarification emails to participants to gather background information, such as their roles and responsibilities. This helped us focus on the main topics during the actual sessions. After the interviews, we compiled this information into a tabular format for all participants.
Participant Profile Findings
I analyzed the video recordings and created notes for each session with the support of my team. Initially, we prepared the notes manually, but later we utilized the Webex Assistant's auto-transcription tool and Dovetail to save time and ensure we captured everything accurately. I then analyzed the data from these notes and compiled findings, including pain points, opportunities, and verbatim highlights for each participant profile.
Thematic Analysis
Summarizing and making sense of qualitative data posed a significant challenge in this research project. I collected and analyzed all the interview transcripts, highlighting key verbatims and assigning codes to each fragment. I then grouped similar codes to uncover overarching themes and categorized these findings into three priority levels (High, Medium, and Low), which I logged into an Excel sheet template.
To synthesize the transcripts, I employed a journaling-based thematic analysis approach, involving manual annotation and highlighting of the data, along with documenting my ideas and thought processes. This method was necessary due to the large volume of data and the remote nature of our collaboration, which made it difficult to utilize approaches like affinity diagramming.
Thematic Analysis: UX Prioritization
I prioritized actionable insights from the thematic analysis based on the following factors::
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Design vs Process Issue: Impediments that can be solved through design is given higher priority
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User Needs: Prioritizing based on what delivers the greatest value to users—such as solving their pain points, enhancing usability, or improving accessibility.
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Business Goals: Aligning with the organization’s objectives, whether it’s increasing revenue, engagement, or reducing costs.
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Technical Feasibility: Assessing whether features or changes are technically viable, align with existing design system components and patterns, and fit within time and resource constraints.
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Effort vs. Impact: Using frameworks (MoSCoW Method) to categorize tasks by their effort (resources needed) versus the impact they’ll have on the user or business.
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Statistical Significance: Prioritizing improvements or features backed by statistically significant data from user surveys
UX Priorities
I organized all the High and Medium priority items into separate groups of slides for the research findings presentation.
UX Remediation
I developed UX remediation slides for each High and Medium priority issue, highlighting insights along with details such as supporting evidence and opportunities or recommendations for resolving and enhancing the user experience.
Design Collaboration
I collaborated with the design team on defining information architecture, task flows, wireframing, and high-fidelity prototyping.
Main Dashboard
Collateral Surplus / Deficit
RQV Instructions
Positions Dashboard
Moderated Usability Testing
After creating the Figma prototype, we conducted a structured usability study to evaluate the designs. We followed the same meticulous procedure for usability testing, which included finding and recruiting internal operational users, creating the usability test script, moderating the sessions, and compiling the findings into the Problem Table. I moderated the sessions while my team analyzed the session videos and collated the findings, ultimately iterating on the design.
Usability Issues
Impact
State Street successfully launched its triparty collateral management offering for buy-side clients, resulting in increased satisfaction and service renewals from major clients. The success of this project also garnered support for more advanced features and further enhancements to the holistic approach to funding and transformation solutions for institutional buy-side clients.
In the news
Recognition of the Research Efforts
I was honored to receive the Bravo Award in recognition of my research contributions to this project.
Thank you for making it to the end 🙏
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