Redesigning an investment management platform for a firm FirstTrust Capital Management. As their business scaled, their platform became increasingly complex. Advisors had to navigate multiple pages just to find client or fund data, onboarding was slow and error-prone, and dashboards lacked consistency which directly impacted decision-making.

So the challenge wasn’t just improving UI it was simplifying a highly data-heavy, business-critical system.

Understanding the Problem

I started with stakeholder interviews and a UX audit. What stood out was that users were spending more time searching for information than actually using it.

Fragmented information across multiple pages

• Confusing navigation and unclear hierarchy

• Redundant and inefficient workflows

• Overwhelming onboarding forms

• Inconsistent data representation

• No centralized access to critical insights

This pointed to a deeper issue poor information architecture and lack of system design thinking.

Redesign Approach

I conducted: Stakeholder interviews, UX audits, Workflow mapping & Data structure analysis This revealed that users were spending more time finding information than acting on it.

• Created clear hierarchies for client, advisor, and fund data

• Grouped related information logically

• Reduced navigation depth

• Designed task-oriented flows

Workflow Simplification

Onboarding & Data Redesign

• Broke long forms into step-based journeys

• Added progress indicators

• Introduced inline validation

• Reduced unnecessary fields

• Designed centralized dashboards

• Standardized financial data visualization

• Created a “single source of truth”

Design System for Scale

• Built a reusable component library

• Applied across 150+ pages

• Ensured consistency across dashboards, forms, and reports

• Maintain UI consistency

• Improve development efficiency

• Support long-term scalability

For onboarding, I redesigned long forms into step-based flows with progress indicators and inline validation which significantly reduced friction.

Results

• Faster administrative workflows

• Reduced onboarding time

• Improved platform adoption

• Better decision-making through clear data

• And a 5/5 client satisfaction score

Key Takeaway

• Start with system-level thinking, not just screens

• Simplify complexity through structure and hierarchy

• Design for scalability from day one

• Align UX with business-critical outcomes