Morningstar
Company
Morningstar: Sustainalytics is an independent ESG (environmental, social, and governance) research, ratings, and data firm that supports investors in developing and implementing responsible investment strategies. It provides analysis on environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities to hundreds of institutional investors and asset managers worldwide.
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Role
During my time at Morningstar, I became Lead Experience Designer (having started as a Senior UX Designer).
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Responsibilities
I ensured that complex methodological procedures are transformed into functioning platforms that expert users efficiently use to evaluate organisations and create sustainability-related products (ESG Research, Climate Solutions, Impact Solutions, Transition Rating, and Stewardship Services). My product ownership experience aided me in rapidly securing a seat at the table and shaping products from their very inception. As these platforms were internal, this meant access to expert users and the potential to attain rapid insights into their protocols. User testing and validation were also easy to monitor.
01. The Complexity of a product
A large part of my activities is based on defining & creating new products. A recent example of such a product is Impact Rating.**
My involvement in the Impact Rating product took hundreds of hours of stakeholders exploratory sessions (Business Analysts, Product Managers, dedicated Research Team). The process featured continuously renegotiated iterations. The result was a research platform that analysts may use to evaluate organisations and generate an Impact Rating.**
A vital part of this process entails relying on information visualisation by transforming large, complicated, and interconnected data sets into actual platforms that analysts use to perform their work.
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About 40-100 expert users were scheduled to be working on this product, which meant a potential for adequate user-testing and ease-of-use in collecting insights and validating new ideas. This product was hosted on the biggest research platform (Canvas), which accommodated about 2000 expert users. ​
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**Impact Rating is a classification used to describe how significant the effect an organisation might have on its sub-industry.
02. Guiding Organic Growth
Organic growth within an organisation is generally accompanied by a lack of cohesion within its tools. Correspondingly, the research platforms I have worked on had this issue, which saw the creation of the uniformisation initiative.
"The Case for Uniformisation" - a business case elaborated to attain buy-in on this massive cross-team endeavour from the leadership team.**
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This initiative was meant to reduce inter-departmental friction and drive collaboration for Engineering, Design & Product. If all platforms were adequately aligned in their technology & design system, that meant that each team could expand their ownership to other platforms. It would also reduce research & development time by a major ~25-45% over time. Additionally, the workflow alignment and standardised procedures resulting from this alignment would also reduce analyst work and increase task efficiency by 15-30%.***
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**The term "uniformisation" primarily refers to the Uniformisation Theorem in complex analysis and differential geometry, a profound result that classifies all simply connected Riemann surfaces.
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***Measured by taking into account cross-platform fluency, onboarding speed, predictability metrics, and cross-department user migration
03. Refining the Design System
The uniform approach aims to not only ensure interdepartmental flexibility between users but has also made the development of new features more efficient by using a single framework and a single identity across different products, with different teams.
Subsequently, this approach must ensure that the cohesive design adopted is well-documented and featured in a comprehensive design system.
This Design System also featured a direct link towards the relevant code the afferent component (or subcomponent) is referencing. While this might seem outdated now, it was incredibly well-received by Engineering teams.
*a product
The primary driver of my role involves interpreting complex methodological requirements that guide the work of analysts. This means that you might find yourself stuck in the intrinsic complexity of the product if you lack a coherent understanding of Impact Rating particularities (metrics, objectives, or goals).
**By clicking on the button and navigating the website, you agree to the terms and conditions applied that restrict any sort of misuse. This product was eventually dropped from production.