ESG Assessment

Finance professionals are highly involved in helping corporations assess and execute critical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives that demonstrate transparency and accountability to sustainability-focused stakeholders, investors, regulators, and consumers.

To meet organizations’ timely needs in the fast-evolving ESG landscape, we created a purpose-built solution that helped financial professionals make a crucial shift from relying on outdated Excel spreadsheets to leading with an efficient ESG data management system.

As product design lead, I was responsible for designing a scalable platform to support the initial release of the ESG Materiality Assessment. In partnership with my co-designer, technical team, and subject matter experts, we reimagined how financial professionals tailor client-specific ESG strategy with focus on collaboration, quality, efficiency, and ease of use to effectively increase productivity, user satisfaction, and speed to market.

Making opportunity a non-issue

Client Challenge

ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria are used to evaluate a company's impact on the environment, society, and corporate governance. Conducting ESG Materiality Assessments helps prioritize non-financial ESG issues and identify growth initiatives, but outdated tools and processes have posed challenges for enterprise-focused engagement teams in meeting client and emerging market demands.

Solution

In the first release of the product, our technical team developed a custom web platform for efficient management of ESG Assessments. This platform integrates industry ESG standards into a flexible assessment module that can be customized to meet the specific needs of each client. As the lead product designer, I developed and implemented a UX strategy from concept to launch, collaborating with my co-designer, business analyst, technical lead, and engineers to test design prototypes with users and iteratively incorporate feedback to improve the final release. While I cannot share all my work, please continue reading to learn about my approach to designing key features.

Problem

In the past, teams used excel files for ESG Assessments. Through conversations, observations, and file reviews, we not only gained an understanding of the format and functionality, but also insights into the processes and workflows that users follow to complete their tasks. Ultimately, relying on excel files and email presented many challenges, including:

• Labor-intensive processes: Lack of centralized data in excel led to repetitive manual data entry and frequently cross-referencing multiple sheets

• Version control issues: No cloud access led to isolated changes in local excel files, email-based sharing, complications consolidating data and delayed deliverables

• Lack of visibility: Siloed workflows made it difficult to track progress, monitor quality, manage effectively, make informed decisions and ensure accountability

• Difficulty scaling: Lack of integration and dated tools impacted the quality of results, timeliness of insights, speed to market and capacity to expand ESG services

Approach

User insights helped uncover critical gaps in the relationships between information, context, and interaction which impacted human and system performance. My strategy for user experience design

My role was to design hierarchy within the system to facilitate human processes and build relationships using UI components to manage a spectrum from high-level to detail-oriented processes that support roles from partner to associate. We worked closely with subject matter experts responsible who perform labor-intensive data entry as well as managers and market leading partners.

• Single Assessment creation flow

• Consistent all-in-one Assessment module for single version of each Assessment

• Streamlined workflows in a “Notebook” workspace for real-time collaboration

• Integrated ESG Frameworks with in-tool Admin management

• Real-time visibility of progress and Reporting

Outcome

The Assessment module is a reusable framework with an adaptable Issues Notebook and Reporting system. It works with any integrated ESG Framework and offers easy access to other supporting features. The module includes a centralized workspace in the Issues Notebook for creating personalized lists of ESG Issues, an overlay for selecting Issues from the chosen ESG Framework, and the ability to create custom Issues.

Issues Notebook

Challenge

To connect each Issue to supporting research, the Issues List in the excel file referenced separate sheets, forcing users to jump from sheet-to-sheet to add, manage or review the details of the research entry. To assess each Issue, users used a separate Analysis tab, values rolled up into an additional tab with a Summary of scores, which fed into a Reporting tab that prioritized Issues without any indication of score, score breakdown, or access to supporting research.

Initial Approach

In effort to group each issue with supporting research and analysis, my initial approach was to create two tabs within the Issues Notebook. Due to the amount of data entry required for each type of research entry and analysis type, I separated an Issue Research tab that nested all research within a collapsible card for each Issue, and an Issue Analysis tab that nested all analysis within a collapsible card for each Issue. Both providing directly editable sub sections on the page, with the Issues Research page utilizing a right Panel overlay to add, modify, or delete a research entry and reference an existing entry across issues to eliminate the need to re-enter general details about the research source information.

• Minimize steps needed to go from issue to research entry

• Maintain context of issue meta data

Insights

What we learned from this approach was

• Overwhelming amount of detail on the page was difficult to navigate and consume, and impacted page performance

• Although we consolidated 6 tabs down to 2 tabs, Issues still repeated across the two tabs and ultimately lacked a complete view

We gained a valuable insight that

• Research must be complete in order to assess the Issue

• and the amount of research is directly related to the severity of score

In an effort to reduce cognitive load, improve page performance, and establish a relationship between Research and Analysis values, I consolidated the two tabs to a single Notebook, and moved labor-intensive activity from being nested within each Issue card on the page to an Issue Panel that opens by clicking the Issue card.

Solution

Issue Cards

This solution provided actionable insights that supported users across roles

• Executive summary with convenient sorting and filtering options for analysis

• Issue card summarizes valuable metadata, presenting two primary direct actions to change the stage of the Issue and option to display in reporting directly on the card

• Issue panel serves as single source of truth, easily allowing Issue owners to manage in a central location

• Any instance of the Issue name provides access to the global Issue panel to provide context easily without navigating away

Solution

Issue Panel

Contains Overview, Study, and Evaluation

• Reference Issue details and manage any modifiable or custom attributes

• Manage Research by type; Select existing research or create new; Add issue-specific references from research; with ability to edit research metadata which will reflect across all instances of research

Supporting Research

Challenge

The Issues panel supports deep work end-to-end for an individual Issue, however

• Only a single Issue can be worked on a time

• Users were required to add an Issue to the workbook in order to add Research

This limited users ability to

• Add research to the system without any issues

• Access and manage all research

• Manage multiple issues regarding an individual research entry in bulk

Approach

A Research Panel was introduced to centralize a repository for all research

• Access Research panel in fixed global right pane

• Easily move between Issue and Research panel by clicking on name

• Admin ability to delete Research from the source

• Admin ability to mass remove Issues from an entry

Solution

Research Panel

Lorem

Reflection

Design systems that scale

I had the opportunity to work as the sole user experience designer on an Assessment platform within the same platform ecosystem, with the same technical team. The successful implementation of that platform helped us win new work. I was able to leverage my existing navigation, interaction model, and interface components from the neighboring platform to assist my co-designer in meeting the new needs of the ESG platform. This also allowed us to extend the capabilities of the design system and maintain consistency between platforms, saving development effort.

Seek why to inform how

Design is in the details, but its easy to get lost in components and assume features without understanding the business need behind desired outcomes. Iterate to learn from users and observe to understand behavior, intentions, and expectations vs reality. How is the way it needs to look, why is the way it needs to function. The achieve minimalism is to use as little interface as possible to achieve the maximum outcome in the most elegant, sophisticated manner.