Morgan Stanley Research Portal
In 2015 I consulted for Morgan Stanley in partnership with Huge Inc. to redesign the way financial research was produced, distributed and consumed by MS Research.
Client
Morgan Stanley
Year
2015-2016
Responsibilities
Design Research, Workshops, UX Design
Overview
In 2015, Morgan Stanley partnered with Huge Inc. to redefine how its Research department created and distributed financial research, focusing on unmet user needs. As the in-house UX designer, I acted as the liaison between Morgan Stanley and Huge, contributing to research, design, and implementation while ensuring alignment across teams.
Roles and Responsibilities
Research and Discovery: Conducted in-house workshops with Morgan Stanley analysts to uncover key pain points while collaborating with Huge on remote user research.
Design Implementation: Oversaw the integration of proposed designs into Morgan Stanley’s systems, ensuring seamless alignment with the organization’s objectives.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Facilitated communication between in-house teams and external consultants to manage priorities and streamline workflows.
Key challenges and Solutions
Content Categorization
Challenge: Users struggled to differentiate between various research categories, leading to confusion about content relevance.
Solution: Introduced five distinct categories of research articles—Bluepaper, Insights, Idea, Update, and Foundation—to clearly structure content and align it with user needs.
Enhanced Content Accessibility
Challenge: Users lacked the ability to deep-dive into specific companies, sectors, or themes from research papers.
Solution: Reengineered the publishing software to align with new categories, enabling easier navigation and access to targeted content.
Improved Subscriptions and Search
Challenge: Poor tagging led to irrelevant subscriptions, while the search experience was cumbersome.
Solution: Enhanced the subscription model to include authors, companies, sectors, and saved searches, and implemented subtractive filtering for a more intuitive search experience.
User-Centric Tools
Challenge: Users couldn’t save articles, organize content, or share insights with team members.
Solution: Introduced tools for saving, organizing, and sharing research within organizations, fostering collaboration and accessibility.
Enhanced Report Presentation
Challenge: Research reports lacked engaging formats and print-ready designs.
Solution: Redesigned reports to feature highlighted quotes, interactive exhibits, related reading links, and optimized layouts for print versions.
Impact and Outcomes
Transformed how analysts categorized and published research, resulting in a streamlined user experience for accessing financial insights.
Empowered users with tools to personalize their workflows, improving content discovery and collaboration within teams.
Elevated research quality with interactive elements and a more engaging presentation, reinforcing Morgan Stanley's leadership in financial analysis.
Learnings
Thorough Functionality Audits: When redesigning long-standing systems, conduct detailed audits to identify legacy functionality and prevent surprises during implementation.
Effective Collaboration with Consultancies: Successfully managing the relationship between in-house teams and external consultants requires clear responsibilities, open communication, and shared accountability.