IHS Markit Totem
Totem is a service for consensus financial market prices. I was part of the team that transformed Totem from an API-based service to an integrated web experience.
Client
IHS Markit
Year
2017-2022
Responsibilities
Lead UX/UI designer, User research, Information architecture
Overview
The Totem platform, initially an API-based service for consensus financial market prices, was transformed into a web platform to enhance usability and deliver advanced self-service and data visualization capabilities. This shift addressed limitations in data distribution, error-prone manual workflows, and lack of integrated user tools.
Role and Responsibilities
Strategy and Leadership: Led the end-to-end design transformation over multiple years, ensuring user-centric outcomes while maintaining visual and functional consistency.
Collaboration: Partnered with SMEs, stakeholders, and clients to deeply understand financial workflows and align solutions with business goals.
Research: Conducted interviews with asset-class specialists, analysts, and clients to identify pain points, prioritize user needs, and inform the product roadmap.
Key challenges and solutions
Data Visualization
Challenge: Users relied heavily on Excel for visualizing Totem data, consuming resources and increasing errors.
Solution: Designed Totem Explore with standardized, ready-to-use visualizations tailored for management and investor presentations, saving users significant time and effort.
Information Overload on Dashboards:
Challenge: Balancing user requests for detailed analytics with constraints on dashboard real estate and development timelines.
Solution: Prioritized high-impact features, such as rejection rate analytics, notifications, and quick links, while deferring niche use cases for future iterations.
Impact and Outcomes
Simplified workflows for 100+ clients across asset classes with integrated tools for pricing submissions, challenge management, and data visualization.
Enhanced customer satisfaction with streamlined reporting and decision-making tools.
Improved operational efficiency by automating previously manual processes, reducing errors, and accelerating data access.
Learnings
Consistency in design patterns is critical for long-term projects; being the primary designer enabled streamlined visuals and user flows across features.
Early and frequent collaboration with SMEs and clients is vital to building domain-specific tools that meet real-world needs.
Iterative feature development can uncover opportunities to refine and enhance earlier designs, ensuring a cohesive user experience across the platform.
Trade data
Challenge: How to make informed market risk decisions with the trust that you have the most accurate data.
Solution: A visualisation service that combines proprietary datasets from MarkitSERV, exchanges, brokers and Totem consensus.
Submission management
Challenge: Clients struggled with spreadsheet-based calendars, leading to versioning issues and missed deadlines.
Solution: Introduced a centralized calendar feature on the Totem Dashboard with clear cut-off times, reducing errors and improving submission compliance.
Price Challenges
Challenge: A manual and inefficient process caused delays and miscommunication.
Solution: Implemented an integrated Price Challenge system, allowing users to submit, track, and resolve challenges directly within the platform.