Summary
ARIA began as a bold experiment: what if risk and portfolio managers could simply ask for insights—without navigating a dashboard, compiling spreadsheets, or waiting on a report?
I led the design of ARIA from concept to prototype, working closely with stakeholders and engineers to turn the vision of a natural-language AI assistant into a usable tool. The product offered fast, conversational access to key financial insights, automatically generating charts, tables, and context with every query.
The prototype launched to a live audience at SS&C’s annual client event and quickly became one of the most talked-about demos. Beyond the event, ARIA sparked serious enterprise conversations and laid the foundation for a new AI-enabled product category within the firm.
Project Overview
ARIA was conceived to solve a growing problem: risk and portfolio managers were overloaded with dashboards, reports, and fragmented data. The goal was to simplify their workflow using AI—giving users the ability to ask natural-language questions and get actionable answers instantly.
My Role
Lead Designer — responsible for the product concept, interaction design, high-fidelity UI, and demo prototype. Worked closely with the engineering team, executive stakeholders, and marketing to shape the product vision and execution.
The Challenge
Information Overload: Users were wasting valuable time digging through dashboards and files to find insights.
Dispersed Data Sources: Key metrics were siloed across tools and systems, making decision-making slow.
Lack of Trust in AI: Previous attempts at automation lacked transparency and user control.
High-Visibility Launch: The product needed to impress at an executive conference and drive real client interest.
Discovery + Research
We conducted interviews with current risk and portfolio teams to understand:
Their most time-consuming data tasks
How they interpreted performance and exposure metrics
What would make them trust AI-generated insights
We also benchmarked competitive tools and internal prototypes to define what “usable AI” meant in this domain.
Strategy + Design Approach
Conversational Interface
The core UX pattern was a natural-language chat interface. Users could ask:
“Where is my highest exposure in tech?”
ARIA would respond with a summary and a supporting chart, pulling real-time data from the portfolio backend.
Actionable Visualizations
Each response included a visual: tables, charts, or performance breakdowns—editable and interactive. Users could dive deeper or follow up with contextual queries, just like a conversation.
Built-In Transparency
To build trust, ARIA showed the data source, confidence level, and a "Why am I seeing this?" explanation for each result.
Prototype for Demo
We created a live, click-through prototype that mimicked a real AI conversation, used to demo at SS&C’s annual client event. It was fast, polished, and interactive.
Outcome + Impact
ARIA exceeded expectations both internally and externally:
Reduced insight time from minutes to seconds
Generated live client interest after the event
Became the foundation for AI-based feature expansion within the company
Most importantly, ARIA showed how well-designed AI could clarify, not complicate, the product experience—and turn risk management into a more human, usable process.
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