A well-known bank client —

Solving for a Fortune 50 bank’s display of tax lot information.

Project TL;DR summary

The goal was to improve the workflow for clients viewing their tax lot information. The team and I did this by taking the data out of a modal, reorganizing the data points and making this complex set of data viewable on a tablet with easy to use navigation.

* Due to the Non-Disclosure Agreement, the name of the client along with identifying images will not be shown.

Problem statement

A customer uses tax lot information to know if an asset (equities, fixed income, etc.) was purchased for a short- or long-term investment. The prior experience forced them to open a model to see this information for each asset, causing frustration. They also couldn’t easily view any of this information on a tablet.

My role in the project

As the product designer, I collaborated with our values stream lead, content strategist, front-end and back-end developers to iterate on possible improvements to streamlining the experience of the tax lots section.

We each had specific responsibilities; for phase 1, my job was to help review the tax lot data coming out of the modal and then placing that data within the table to ensure a clear hierarchy of information.

For phase 2, I conducted competitive analysis research to find a pattern that would work for displaying a complicated table like ours on a tablet. I designed how this table would look on a tablet as was well as an easy-to-use navigation component.

Simplifying tax lot information for affluent bank customers

The site within a site caters to customers and their advisors numbering in the tens of thousands and represents hundreds of billions in holdings.

More of these users are considered power users than your typical bank customer. They are accustomed to complex financial terminology, labels and language. They’re also very vocal about the bank’s features they like and the ones they find tedious.

The mandate: Reduce the number of customer inquiries about the tax lot section.

Our product owner turned to us for a solution for viewing extensive amounts of tax lots data within the asset detail table. The solution would be measured by representative managers and direct customer feedback as well as tracking the numbers of inquiries about this section.

In short order, we had to figure out how to take large amounts of data out of a modal and make it work within a data dense table as well as make it work for tablets.

Phase 1

Our first priority was to take the tax lot information out of the modal and place it within the asset detail table structure. We first looked at minimizing and de-emphasizing duplicate data such as current value, quantity, etc.

Our solution was to create three levels of table rows:

1. Level one was the asset type (equities, fixed income, cash alternatives, etc.)

2. Level two was the account (Janis IRA) that purchased the asset.

3. Level three was the tax lot (receipt of the accounts purchased of the asset)

We drafted a prototype that we presented to our product owner, and front- and back-end developers that reflected the user stories. This restructure of the information simplified a customer’s access to their tax lots data and associated it to the account number with just two clicks.

Phase 2

Our next task was to solve for the tablet viewport. We had to figure out a way to make both our recent desktop tax lots solution and the seven columns of data work for a tablet screen below 800 pixels or low-res desktop experience.

After conducting competitive analysis research of other banks, personal finance services and even online retailers we found a pattern we could build off of. We worked side-by-side with our development partners to ensure the solution could be built.

Our solution for viewing the table on a tablet was a follows:

Build out a static left column containing asset/account/tax lot name.
Followed by six columns of the data that are horizontally scrollable.
We created a new component with indicator dots that would give a user both an idea of where they are within the column structure as well as help them toggle left and right.

This solution for the tablet experience was well received by the product owner and the rest of the scrum team. The line of business marked a drop in the number of inquiries about this particular section, which demonstrated an increase in ease of understanding.