firm data submission framework

FDSF (Firm Data Submission Framework) was a application framework designed for stress testing UK banking networks designed and developed for Credit Suisse Risk and Finance Technology group.

The Problem:

The Risk Reporting financial analysts needed ways to leave, edit, audit and view commentary on the dashboards and across all the dashboards. Currently no such feature existed on the dashboards.

The FDSF application contains several dashboards from Senior Management to Top Movers, Data quality management and Overrides etc. Users wanted this feature across all dashboards

Discovery:

Using contextual inquiries we triangulated the following

Cell level commentary was specific to a the PnL values on every dashboard
Dashboard level commentaries was across the application
Commentaries were made across multiple dashboards across FDSF
There were 2 specific groups of users MLRM and RFDAR
Each needed the ability to view the other groups comments but edit rights were to be within their own group
Concurrent comments also needed to reflected
Users made an average of 80 - 100 comments a day and each comment could be over a 1000 characters or 3 + pages long.
Users also required an audit and history trail as indications of concurrent comments

Methodology

With over 6 dashboards that the commentary had to span we settled on the idea of

Building a design pattern that would lay the commentary as a layer ABOVE the dashboard instead of integrating inside each application
Designs needed to modular and extensible.
Users/roles/groups were identified / segmented.
Requirements were fleshed out via detailed stakeholder interviews and participatory design
User flows were captured
Draft design concepts were tested/vetted with power users and iterated
click through prototypes were provided, tested and pain points were documented
Lo-fi rapid prototypes were used while design standards were developed

Solutions tested and iterated - The Commentary Modal

Concept we iterated out were on was based on a modified but familiar design pattern used commonly by magazine and news sites.
Users were provided with features to view commentary from individual cell, dashboard and consolidated comments across all dashboards.
Comments could be filtered by users, groups and date ranges.
Edit rights were provided by role
Users would edit their own comments and append notes to others comments
Users would launch a commentary pane by clicking on a individual cell which would display comments to the specific Pnl.
The comments pane was also draggable and dockable to to the right side of the grid
The panel could also launched as a right drawer from the right side of the grid but left closed as default

Commentary pane docked to the right of dashboard

Journeys, Flows, Pain Points!

Users and roles were identified
Journeys were mapped and problem spaces were identified.
Entry and exit points were identified as well as edit / read rights
One of the key pain points we discovered were the need to represent concurrent comments being made in a cell
The other key issues was the ability to show over 3000 characters they may have in one comment and with keeping an audit trail for notes
Making it local and global across all dashboard(s) was yet another problem to solve for the design team

Interaction Solutions

Users would view the icon(s) and click on them launch a modal that displayed comments specific to the cell and PnL value
The modal allowed the user to view and display commentary by specific groups.
The modal had the ability to be docked and pinned top right of the dashboard
If comments were concurrent, users were presented with an icon prompting to refresh by making a call to the server
Comments were truncated and when user clicked on "see more" the full comment was displayed with a scroll bar if required
Comments were date and time stamped
The commentary modal had a pinning/unpinning feature to make it a free floating modal if user required
The modal also provide a search feature

The Consolidated Commentary Suite

One of the key requirements ask as well was the ability to view commentaries across multiple dashboards

We added an icon to the top right that would launch a commentary suite like modal.
Advanced filters to support were provided to left of panel and commentary lists and text were displayed to the right of the panel
Users responded positively to both the specific to a dashboard commentary modal pane as well as the modal suite. All earlier solutions were legacy and involved the use of multiple applications.
We then tested, iterated and prepped final specifications and red line markups