Problem
Morgan Stanley's ACATS (Automated Customer Account Transfer Service) system is a way for the company to transfer large accounts in and out of the bank. After I had started working on the Settlements UX, the ACATS team got wind of the redesign and wanted me to help them rework their ACATS experience as well. Their current UI was outdated, slow, and incredibly unintuitive, and users were having trouble doing even basic tasks.
Solution
The workflow was very similar to the Settlements redesign. I began as I usually do with understanding requirements and interviewing users. Contextual Inquiry helped to reveal flaws in the system and gave me a great intro to the user's day-to-day interactions with the UI.
From there, based on the interviews, I documented personae for the various user types, helping to understand pain points.
And then I focused on Top Task Analysis, trying to understand what the most salient features of the UI should be, and what might be secondary or tertiary. I sent out a survey, asking users to come up with the Top 5 Tasks htat they need to performa every day, and the feedback was less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of my hypotheses.
I then felt ready to start iterating designs, which I did with the Product Owner and a lead Developer, using InVision's Freehand as a whiteboard and then multiple iterations with Sketch.
Finally, having set up a visual language with the Settlements UI, it was realitvely straightforward to bring the UI together.
Like with Settlements, the designs were handed off to the design team and dev team for implementation.
