Case 07 — Wealthscape Case Management · Ryan Foss

Phase 01 — Discovery & Problem Definition

Where does advisor time actually go?

Before any sketching, I embedded in the workflow. I shadowed 6 financial advisors and 4 ops associates across two days, then conducted structured interviews. The findings challenged every assumption I had brought into the room.

01

User Research — Contextual Inquiry & Interviews

I spent two days shadowing advisors and ops associates at their actual workstations, watching them work live rather than asking them to reconstruct their process. The single most revealing observation: advisors maintained personal spreadsheet trackers alongside the official system — a classic signal that the product has failed to solve the real workflow problem.

VERBATIM RESEARCH FINDINGS · DIRECT QUOTES

"I have 40 open cases. I don't know which three are going to blow up today." — Senior Advisor, HNW book
"I'm constantly pinging ops to find out where a transfer is. There's no visibility." — Advisor, $120M AUM
"I get the same question from two different advisors on the same case. No one can see what the other did." — Ops Associate
"If a case is going to breach SLA I want to know Tuesday, not Friday." — Team Lead, Digital Service
"I'd rather have one thing that does this well than five tools I have to cross-reference." — Advisor, 8 yrs

CORE TENSION Urgency is invisible · Priority lives in people's heads, not the system
SECOND TENSION Two users, one workflow · Advisors and ops share cases but have no shared view

KEY INSIGHT

The problem wasn't that the data didn't exist. It was that no interface surfaced the right signal at the right moment. Advisors were doing triage manually every morning because the system couldn't do it for them.

02

Problem Statement & Design Principles

From synthesis, I defined the core design problem as a constraint — not a feature request. Every downstream decision in the project was evaluated against these three non-negotiable principles.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES · PRIORITIZED

PRINCIPLE	IN PRACTICE	PRIORITY
Triage first	The first thing an advisor sees must answer: "what do I work on right now and why." Global context before case detail — always.	Critical
Priority is triply encoded	Never rely on a single visual signal for urgency. Color + age + SLA status = redundant encoding. If one is missed in a scan, the others catch it.	Critical
Shared surface, dual persona	Advisors and ops associates must both live in this tool without separate interfaces. One mental model, progressive disclosure of role-specific detail.	High
AI as signal, not substitute	AI surfaces recommended next actions — it never initiates them. Every suggestion requires a human decision point before anything executes.	High

03

Persona Mapping — Two Users, One System

The system has to serve two fundamentally different mental models without fragmenting into two products. I mapped what each persona needed at each stage of a case lifecycle to find the shared surface.

PERSONA CONTRAST MAP

NEED	FINANCIAL ADVISOR	OPS ASSOCIATE
Primary question	"What needs my attention today?"	"What is blocked and why?"
Time horizon	Today's queue, this week's SLAs	Current task, escalation path
Key anxiety	Client relationship damage from delays	Incomplete instructions, re-work
Decision type	Prioritize, escalate, communicate	Execute, verify, document
AI usefulness	Recommended next action, client update drafts	Missing doc detection, compliance flags
Audit need	Case status for client-facing updates	Full activity trail, timestamps

DESIGN DECISION

The shared surface is the case detail panel — both personas land in the same view with the same timeline. Role-specific detail (compliance flags for ops, client update drafts for advisors) is surfaced contextually in the AI insight card based on assignment, not a mode switch.

Phase 02 — User Flow Mapping

Mapping the critical paths

I mapped four flows: the daily triage loop, the case lifecycle from open to close, the escalation exception path, and the ops handoff. Every flow had to be a first-class design concern — not just the happy path.

04

Primary Flow — Advisor Daily Triage Loop

The advisor's entry point each morning is the queue, not an individual case. The design had to answer the prioritization question before the advisor clicked anything. Situational awareness → triage → action is the irreducible sequence.

FLOW DIAGRAM · DAILY TRIAGE · HAPPY PATH

Advisor opens queueMorning entry point

→

KPI strip rendersOpen · SLA risk · Avg resolution

→

Scan case listPriority · Age · Owner

→

Open case detailAI insight surfaces

→

One-click next actionDocuSign · Escalate · Update

EXCEPTION PATH · SLA BREACH ESCALATION

SLA threshold crossed>80% window elapsed

→

Age cell turns red⚠ visual flag

→

Advisor opens detailAI surfaces escalation path

→

Escalates to supervisorOne-click action

→

Timeline entry loggedAudit trail preserved

05

Case Lifecycle — Open to Close

Every case moves through a defined set of states. I mapped the state machine before designing a single component — this prevented the common failure mode where status badges are invented screen-by-screen and become inconsistent across the product.

STATE MACHINE · CASE LIFECYCLE

STATE	TRIGGER	VISUAL ENCODING	NEXT STATES
Open	Case created by advisor or system	Blue pill · No age warning	In progress, Escalated
In progress	Ops associate claims case	Amber pill · Age clock starts	Pending approval, Escalated
Pending approval	Requires senior review or compliance	Purple pill · SLA continues	In progress, Escalated, Resolved
Escalated	SLA threshold crossed or advisor flags	Red pill + red age text + ⚠	In progress, Resolved
Resolved	All actions complete, advisor confirms	Green pill · SLA clock stops	Reopened (exception)

WHY THIS MATTERS

A consistent state machine means every pill, age indicator, and SLA bar follows the same encoding logic. Advisors build a mental model once — they don't relearn it on every case type. This is the difference between a designed system and a collection of screens.

Phase 03 — Information Architecture

One surface, two mental models

Before touching a single component, I mapped the full IA. The navigation had to serve both advisor and ops associate without mode-switching — one coherent structure, with progressive disclosure handling the role-specific depth.

06

Navigation Architecture — Sidebar Structure

I audited all existing Wealthscape navigation patterns and mapped how this feature set would integrate. The sidebar follows a workspace-first model: the top items represent the advisor's daily context, the bottom items represent operational utilities. Badge logic is defined globally so every team building into Wealthscape follows the same rules.

IA MAP · SIDEBAR HIERARCHY

NAV ITEM	PRIMARY USER	BADGE LOGIC	DISCLOSURE LEVEL
Case queue	Both	Count of open cases; red if ≥1 SLA at risk	Full — always visible
Clients	Advisor	None unless a client has a flagged case	Full
Accounts	Advisor	None standard	Full
Requests	Advisor	Count of pending digital requests	Full
SLA analytics	Ops / Team lead	Red if team SLA health <85%	Progressive — summary by default
Workflows	Ops	Count of stalled workflow steps	Progressive — template detail on demand
Documents	Both	Count of pending signatures	Progressive — list view default

07

Page-Level Hierarchy — The Queue View

I broke the queue view into four information zones with explicit priority ordering. This hierarchy prevents the enterprise failure mode: everything displayed at equal visual weight, so nothing is actually actionable.

VISUAL HIERARCHY MAP · QUEUE VIEW

TIER	ZONE	VISUAL TREATMENT	RATIONALE
T1 · Primary	KPI strip (Open, SLA risk, Avg resolution, Digitized %)	Largest type, full-width, always above fold	Situational awareness before triage — the advisor needs global context before local action
T2 · Secondary	Case list with priority dots + age signals	Priority dot · Bold case name · Status pill · Age coloring	Triage surface — the primary work zone. Everything competes only with other cases, not chrome
T3 · Tertiary	Tab filters (Assigned to me, Escalated, SLA at risk)	Mono labels, understated unless tab is active	Narrowing tools — available but should not compete with the case list itself
T4 · On demand	Case detail panel (AI insight, SLA bar, timeline, fields)	Slides in over list, full panel — detail replaces scanning	Progressive disclosure — revealed only when advisor has committed to a case. Depth without noise.

DESIGN DECISION — SLIDE-OUT VS. DRILL-IN

I chose a side panel over a separate page for case detail. Reason: advisors frequently compare 2–3 cases when triaging. A side panel lets them open a case, see its AI insight, close it, open the next — without navigation stack management. Drill-in navigation would add 2–3 clicks to a workflow that happens 20+ times per day.

Phase 04 — Component Design & System Thinking

The components that carry the system

In a multi-team platform like Wealthscape, component decisions are architectural decisions. Every component I design either extends the existing system or creates a precedent that other teams will follow. I treat components as contracts, not screens.

08

Priority Signal — Iteration History

The single most important component is the priority indicator on each case row. It's scanned hundreds of times per day, has to work in peripheral vision, and must communicate urgency without requiring focus. I ran through 5 iterations before landing on the final pattern.

ITERATION LOG · PRIORITY SIGNAL

V1: Status pill alone · FAILED — advisors had to read every pill to triage, impossible to scan 20 cases
V2: Red/amber/green row background · FAILED — color bleeding made the list feel like a stoplight, high anxiety
V3: Priority column with text labels (High / Med / Low) · FAILED — too slow to scan, text requires foveal reading
V4: Priority dot (6px colored circle) · PARTIAL — faster to scan, but lacked age context
V5: Priority dot + age coloring (red text past SLA threshold) · WINNER — two signals, neither requires focus

Final pattern: DOT for categorical priority + AGE CELL color for temporal urgency + PILL for status state
Three signals, three dimensions, none redundant with each other

09

AI Insight Card — Trust Architecture

The AI insight card is the highest-risk component in the system. In a financial context, a poorly communicated AI recommendation could cause an advisor to act incorrectly on a $4M account. I applied the same trust architecture I use across all AI-assisted financial tools: surface the reasoning, not just the recommendation. Make the action explicit. Never auto-execute.

AI INSIGHT COMPONENT SPEC

ELEMENT	FUNCTION	DESIGN RATIONALE
Insight label "✦ Assistant"	Source attribution	Advisors must always know when output is AI-generated vs. system-derived. The ✦ glyph is the AI marker across the entire design system.
Prose explanation	Reasoning, not just recommendation	Advisors who understand why an action is recommended are more likely to make the right call when the AI is wrong. Explanation builds calibration, not dependency.
One-click action buttons	Reduce friction to zero for recommended next steps	The buttons are labeled with the action, not "confirm" — "Send DocuSign reminder" not "OK." Specificity prevents mis-taps.
No auto-execute	Human always in the loop	In financial services, an automated action on a wrong AI read is an AUM-risk event. The system surfaces the path; the advisor walks it.

10

SLA Health Bar — Communicating Risk Without Alarm

SLA status is the highest-anxiety metric in the system. An advisor who sees every case as red stops treating red as meaningful. I designed a three-state system calibrated to drive action at the right moment, not constant vigilance.

SLA ENCODING · THREE-STATE SYSTEM

ON TRACK · <50% WINDOW USED

No action needed. Advisor checks detail for context only.

MONITOR · 50–80% WINDOW USED

AI surfaces a nudge. Advisor is informed, not alarmed.

AT RISK · >80% WINDOW USED

Red age text in list + red bar + AI escalation path. Every signal fires.

CALIBRATION PRINCIPLE
───────────────────
Green = no attention needed
Amber = awareness, queue it
Red = act now, AI shows how

If everything is red,
nothing is red.
SIGNAL MUST BE RARE TO BE MEANINGFUL

11

Cross-Team Consistency — Platform Design Thinking

Wealthscape is a multi-team platform. Any component I introduce has to be documented well enough that another team can implement it consistently. I produced a component spec and contribution pattern for each new element in this feature area.

PLATFORM CONTRIBUTION SPEC

COMPONENT	EXTENDS	NEW TOKENS INTRODUCED	USAGE GUIDANCE
Priority dot	Existing status indicator family	None — uses existing red/amber/green semantic tokens	Use only for categorical priority. Never for status state (use pill instead).
SLA health bar	New — contributes to progress bar family	sla-track, sla-fill-{on-track, monitor, at-risk}	Three-state only. Do not add states without design system review.
AI insight card	New — contributes to AI disclosure family	ai-assistant-glyph, ai-action-button	Always include reasoning prose above actions. Never surface action buttons alone.
Activity timeline	Extends audit trail pattern	tl-dot-{neutral, info, success, error}	Chronological only, newest first. Human and system events share the same track.

Phase 05 — Working Interactive Prototype

The full working interface

This is the production-fidelity prototype. Click any case row to open the detail panel — the AI insight, SLA health bar, case metadata, and activity timeline are all live and interactive. The detail panel slides in from the right, preserving the list context behind it.

Phase 06 — Outcomes & Design Reflection

What this proves, and what I'd push further

A prototype is a hypothesis made tangible. Here's what this design proves, where the open questions live, and how I'd approach validation in a live agile sprint.

12

Design Hypotheses — What This Prototype Tests

Every design decision in this prototype is a testable hypothesis. I mapped each to a measurable outcome and a validation method I would propose in the next sprint.

HYPOTHESIS MAP · VALIDATION APPROACH

HYPOTHESIS	METRIC	VALIDATION METHOD
KPI strip reduces time-to-first-action in triage	Time from queue load to first case open	Task-based usability test, compare to current baseline
Triple-encoded priority (dot + age + pill) is faster to scan than text labels	Triage accuracy at 20 cases; time per decision	5-second test; compare with/without dot encoding
Slide-out panel preserves list context vs. drill-in navigation	Number of cases reviewed per session; navigation errors	A/B test in Pendo; track case-open events
AI insight + one-click action reduces per-case handle time	Avg time from case open to action taken	FullStory session analysis; pre/post sprint comparison
SLA three-state system drives action at the right threshold	SLA breach rate; advisor response time when bar enters amber	Analytics instrumentation; 30-day cohort analysis

13

What I'd Push Further — The Open Questions

Good design acknowledges what it doesn't yet know. These are the questions I'd bring into the next sprint cycle.

OPEN DESIGN QUESTIONS · NEXT SPRINT

NOTIFICATION MODEL Should SLA alerts be push notifications, or is the queue pull model enough? Advisors already have notification fatigue from other tools.

BULK ACTIONS Ops associates may need to claim, update, or close multiple cases at once. The current model is case-by-case. Is that a friction point or intentional throttle?

MOBILE Advisors check their queue from their phones in the morning. The current design is desktop-primary. A companion mobile view for queue scanning would need its own hierarchy decisions.

AI CALIBRATION How does the AI insight card communicate uncertainty? If the system is low-confidence in its recommendation, the current design doesn't surface that. This is a trust architecture gap I'd address next.

Design decisions made

24

Each traced to a user need

Components specified

8

4 extend existing system

User flows mapped

4

Including 2 exception paths

Prototype fidelity

100%

Fully interactive, no mocks

WealthscapeCase Management

Where does advisor time actually go?

Mapping the critical paths

One surface, two mental models

The components that carry the system

The full working interface

Case queue

Clients

Accounts

Requests

SLA analytics

Workflows

Documents

What this proves, and what I'd push further

Wealthscape
Case Management