TLDR
A wealth portal built once for many advice firms, while the first client wanted its own. As sole UX designer, I turned bespoke requests into configuration and cut 30+ user stories to four journeys. The whole was never agreed, but the single inbox and request-led documents landed.
01
One product for many firms, while one firm wanted its own
I answered bespoke requests with configuration: switch a feature off, never build a version.
Six product owners held six definitions, with no personas. So the dashboard became a fixed set of widgets each firm switches on or off. A firm with no goals product never shows goals.
02
Two inboxes became one, and the vault became a request
Existing behaviour argued against both stories, and both cuts landed.
Seventy per cent of the client’s existing users were on mobile, which held mobile-first against a web-focused room. At FNB, people testing a document vault I’d designed hesitated to store documents with their bank, so clients here upload against a request instead.
| The stories asked for | I proposed | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Messages and notifications, two areas | One filtered inbox, action required first | One place to check |
| A personal document vault | Receive documents, upload on request | At FNB, people hesitated to store documents with a bank |
| A sharing-permissions model | Removed | The upload is the permission |
03
An interim dashboard while the money moves
Until onboarding ends, the dashboard tracks each transfer, and it changes as they land.
Product owners expected onboarding to take weeks, longer when a mortgage or another provider’s policy moves across. An empty dashboard in that gap reads as nothing happening.
04
What landed, and what didn’t
The inbox and request-led documents landed. Agreement on the whole stalled on what every firm must show, and what success meant.
- 4journeys, from 30+ user stories
- 1inbox, from two product areas
- 15+reviews
- 6product owners
My journey template gave six product owners one format, but a format can’t settle a strategy. The client then took design in-house. The work stays with FNZ as an internal core product, not yet reused with another client.
Next time
Both questions come first, with the alignment workshop I asked for midway. I’d measure onboarding completion and how often firms configure rather than build.
Later visualisation, not production design
