Entity Screening

Crafting a screening tool for Bloomberg

Company
Isobar & Bloomberg
Project Date
Jan 2016 - July 2017
ROLE/TEAM
Product Designer (myself), 1 UX Manager, 3 Product Managers

KYC (or know your customer) has been an active part of Bloomberg's business for a few years now. The objective here was to create an application for the digital KYC product suite that would allow lenders to screen companies before doing business with them.

The Problem

How to balance making sure the user had access to all the data they needed to make their decisions, while not overwhelming them with too much information at any given moment?

Research Phase

First I took a look at the competition and I saw a lot of information without any direction

So I held workshops with key stakeholders

And then started sketching

Personas and Experience Mapping

From my findings and sketching, I created the following personas

Experience mapping

Then I plotted the personas on an experience map to show how'd they'd use the product.

Solution

Diagramming

Once I had all these materials, I created a sitemap to show the overall information architecture

I also made some diagrammatic flows to flesh out the detailed information architecture for certain key pieces of the product.

Early Wireframing

Once I had the information architecture fleshed out, I began sketching some initial wires

And then I brought those ideas into rough wires

But I realized I was trying to cram too much into a small space with those designs, so I broke things out more

Detailed Designs

After experimenting in rough wires for a while, I arrived at the following designs:

Outcomes and Takeaways

1. I'm very proud of the work I did on this product since I was able to take it from nothing all the way to build. Usually we jump into something that's already been produced and we have a limited impact. On this, I was present for all stages of design and build. So from that perspective, this was a great opportunity.

2. Having said that, this was earlier in my career and I was coming in as a consultant. Because of these factors, I never really asked the question of why were we building this? Was the KYC space really robust enough and was the need really that large where this product would have life? As it turned out the answer was no. This product didn't ever really get enough clients to sustain itself.

3. Moving past this, I always now try to think about the lifespan of the work I do now. I'm still learning, but this experience taught me so much about taking a product to market.