OVERVIEW
In 2020, S&P Global Ratings announced a new initiative to retire & consolidate over 20+ legacy applications into a single web application, Ratings Analytical Platform (RAP). I was hired to lead the strategy & design of the end to end experience–overseeing 20+ UX projects and managing a team of UX designers dedicated to this initiative.
The need for RAP was introduced with a core vision in mind–to be a centralized analytical platform consisting of “models” and non-model features integrated as services that would drive user satisfaction, reduce time to market, operating, and infrastructure cost, while achieving configurability and agility. Our goal was to optimize users’ interaction with heavy sets of data and models to conduct efficient pre-analysis and analysis and to make informed analytical and business decisions for clients.
In addition to RAP, I also manage all aspects of both the RAP admin dashboard and RAP’s integration into Ratings360, our external platform for customers. My main responsibilities include designing the core features and services for all things RAP, monitoring interaction and UI consistency, maintaining our design library and style guides, and working closely with developers during implementation and testing. All in all, I work closely with over 20 scrum teams, product managers, business analysts, and QA teams.
USER FRUSTRATION
At S&P Ratings, analysts are split across 10+ practices, or verticals. Although all users have the same end goal of developing, applying ratings and keeping up to date with latest data trends, each practice has restrictions, complexities, and unique user flows to achieve this. Prior to RAP, our internal analysts were using various applications that were outdated, clunky, and lacked proper integration which created a poor flow of data.
We worked closely with a group of analysts from each practice who allotted 50% of their time to help build and prioritize the functionalities within RAP. Because the applications and user flow has so many complex and granular details, we included these analysts in almost every phase of each sprint, from collecting business requirements, initial design planning sessions, to design presentations.
FUSING MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS INTO ONE SINGLE PLATFORM
The biggest challenge was to understand the complexities and specific business requirements of each legacy application. I wanted to ensure that the proposed design solutions would accommodate different sets of complex data from multiple applications without breaking UX and UI consistency or frustrating users with unpredictable user flows.
On the left is an example of a legacy application, Smart Arrows, used by analysts to create test data sets for review purposes prior to publishing on external platforms.
ROLE & CONTRIBUTIONS
I worked closely with Information Architect SMEs, product managers, business analysts and engineers to ensure that we were building the foundatings of the application in such a way that allowed consistency across 10+ practices, each with its own nuances, requirements, and technical limitations. I heavily contributed to the creation of UI standards and style guides to ensure that the same look and feel was applied across the entire platform.
I created a library of UI components complimented with style guides which helped streamline design and implementation across 20+ scrum teams and acted as the source of reference for dev teams and QA Leads.
FINAL DESIGN
Centralized analytics dashboard with imbedded tools, APIs, and services that empower users to conduct analysis and deliver client workflows by eliminating the need to tap into various applications and exponentially reducing time to complete tasks.
Coming from a tech start up background and successfully launching new products, I was able to leverage my experience with designing interfaces for scalable MVP products with complex business requirements.
During a showcase presented to the entire technology department along with stakeholders and executives, we discovered that the new experience reduced task time by 27 minutes.
On the left is the main landing page dashboard, the gateway into all of the features and tools in RAP. On the right is an example of an analytical workflow interface where users can see current data trends, refer to historical audits, and make any changes based on client confidential data to conduct efficient analysis and apply informed ratings.