Fee Flow

Case study of an enterprise application designed to consolidate Fee Schedule creation process across different lines of business.

5 min readSep 9, 2018

To comply with non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study including the branding. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of BNY Mellon.

Challenge

The challenge was to redesign the fee schedule creation process under Fee Flow Application.During the usability analysis conducted by the senior managers within the UX team at BNY Mellon, it was found out that fee schedule creation process had lot of usability issues like navigation,layout etc .In 2017, an effort was made by UX team to redesign the whole fee schedule creation process.I was given the opportunity to work on it.We started this effort by setting high level goals.

Intuitiveness : Don't let user think a lot before taking an action
Better Experience : The design should allow user to navigate better.

My Role

I collaborated with Senior UX manager to understand what were usability issues that came up during analysis and we both worked together for this project. I was responsible for providing prototypes. I also collaborated with UX designer who initially worked on it to understand the application better and the research done earlier on this project. I received huge help from Visual Designers. In the process, I worked together with Business Analysts, Developers and Product Manager.

Process

Empathy

We started with domain study to understand the process better.It was important to know the existing application.We conducted User interviews with one of the stakeholders and also business user to better understand their problems. We focused on “Think out loud” metrics to capture all the possible insights.One of the response from them was “I feel lost when I try to go and create a fee schedule, don't know how to navigate back and end up starting the process all over again”. So was the case when I dig deep into it.

Define

During this phase we listed down the pain points and what exactly user need.We also went through Usability Analysis report to know what the findings were during analysis.It was quite clear that the flow was missing in fee schedule creation and moreover the user had issues with layout.

To better define the flow,we came up with user stories and all possible tasks.

User Stories Format : As a [user/persona], I would like to [low-level task], so that [high-level goal]. For example, As an user, I would like to select a product, so that I can create a fee schedule.

Ideate

We went on to create some paper prototypes as well as balsamiq mockups first and used to brainstorm a lot with the team.We also made few assumptions when required which were validated later on with stakeholders.It was quite interesting phase because we already had an application at place and we were working on one piece of it.So it was important to validate ideas keeping in mind the existing interface.

Prototype and Test

I worked on wireframes and prototypes to design an interface which is intuitive and learnable. I used to validate the same with the Senior manager.I used tools like Balsamiq and Axure RP to transform our ideas into design. Also took help from Visual designers to deliver the final product.

Sliding Navigation Bar : The fee schedule creation is a sequential process and user have to go through each stage to complete the process.Each stage had different data in it. It was important to maintain the layout. Since one of the findings was that user doesn’t like to scroll horizontally. So rather than static left bar we came up with a Sliding bar which gives user more space to work on.To allow user navigate better, the buttons were given below with clear indication of what they do.

Narrowing the Stages : It was important to define each stage clearly. It should be intuitive enough to know what can be expected in that stage. We came up with better namings and eliminated/combined the stages where needed.It helped us to limit the stages to 8 which were earlier 11.Below are wireframes.

Deliver

After one month of effort, the design was launched. We received great response from stakeholders.We never stopped taking feedback and kept on iterating when needed.

Learnings

This project was kind of first type which came to me after the usability analysis and I was not involved from initial stages, so it was all together a new experience.The sliding bar was a new component and was never used in enterprise application before in BNY Mellon.Later on this component was also promoted to be part of our organization’s UI asset library. I learned to collaborate with developers and business better during the whole project. It was an amazing experience.

Testimonial

“ I have had the pleasure of working with Gagandeep on a project that has UX designing module. He is an outstanding UX designer and he always takes time to meet with business users and understand the requirements clearly. He is always looking for the best solution.His work was received very well by our business partners. He exceeded the client expectations. I highly recommend him for the UX designing.” — Viswa Marreddy,Former Principal Application Architect at BNY Mellon

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