Data visualisation dashboard for financial portfolio management
Overview
Apex Analytics is a portfolio management dashboard for independent financial advisors managing $10M–$500M AUM. The existing tool was a spreadsheet-based workflow that advisors had outgrown. I designed a real-time analytics dashboard that surfaced insights proactively rather than requiring manual data crunching.
The Problem
Financial advisors were spending 3–4 hours daily in Excel building reports that could be automated. The cognitive load of managing 40–200 client portfolios simultaneously led to missed rebalancing opportunities and compliance risks.
The Goal
Replace manual reporting with an intelligent dashboard that gives advisors a complete portfolio overview in under 60 seconds and surfaces actionable alerts before they become compliance issues.
Design Screens
Design Process
Spent 3 weeks shadowing 6 financial advisors during their daily workflows. Mapped the data relationships between portfolios, alerts, client communications, and regulatory reporting. Learned enough about portfolio theory to design with domain accuracy.
Designed the information hierarchy around the advisor's mental model: portfolio health first, outliers second, actions third. Ran 3 rounds of card sorting to validate how advisors naturally grouped and prioritised data.
Designed 34 chart and data visualisation patterns including portfolio allocation wheels, performance timelines, risk heat maps, and compliance calendars. Worked directly with the data scientist to ensure all visualisations were statistically accurate.
Ran a 6-week beta with 12 advisors managing live portfolios. Tracked time-on-task, alert response times, and daily active usage. Iterated on the notification system, portfolio comparison view, and mobile alert triage.
Research Findings
Advisors needed to compare 2 portfolios side-by-side constantly — a feature no competitor offered at the time.
Alert fatigue was a real risk — advisors started ignoring notifications when too many were low-priority. Smart severity scoring was critical.
Dark mode wasn't a preference, it was a requirement — advisors spent 8+ hours on screens daily and found light UIs fatiguing.
The first 30 seconds of login had to show 'everything is fine' or 'here's what needs your attention today' — not a dashboard of equal-weight widgets.
Outcome
Advisors reduced daily reporting time from 3.5 hours to 25 minutes. Alert response time improved by 64%. The platform was acquired by a mid-market wealth management software company 11 months after launch.