FINRA · Financial Crimes Investigation
Six siloed tools replaced by one workspace for twelve teams.
The brief was speed. I mapped how 25,000 cases a year moved across teams and showed the real problem was structural.
Read Time: Snapshot 1 min · Full case study 7 min
Financial Crime
Regulatory Compliance
Data Visualization
Desktop
Responsive
Client / FINRA
Industry / Financial Crimes Investigation
Team / UX, Product, Engineering
Platform / Desktop
Role / Sr UX Designer
Tools / Figma
Timeline / 10 months
Framework / Angular / .NET
SNAPSHOT
What I was asked to do, and what I did instead.
The ask. Speed up investigations as part of DXT (Digital Experience Transformation), FINRA's multi-year effort to modernize its digital tools.
What I found. The slowdown was structural. Twelve investigation teams were tracking the same cases in six different tools, with no shared language for status, priority, or ownership.
What I did. I ran 10+ investigator interviews across all twelve teams and built a matter sequence map and service blueprint before any UI work began. I reframed the brief as a business risk to bring product and engineering along, then designed one shared investigation workspace and ran FINRA's first self-guided prototype validation session.
The result. One workspace replaced six siloed tools. Twelve teams now see the same case status in the same place, and the widget architecture I designed became the standard across DXT.
Confidentiality note: All data in these screens is fictional. Case details, firms, representatives, and investigators have been replaced to protect client confidentiality. The layouts, components, and interactions are shown as designed.
THE PROBLEM
FINRA's DXT initiative was stalling. Every team was using different tools.
FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, investigates misconduct by brokers and brokerage firms. DXT, its Digital Experience Transformation, is a multi-year effort to modernize and simplify FINRA's digital tools. Investigations were part of that effort, and they had stalled.
Every year, about 25,000 matters (FINRA's term for cases) come in through seven channels, from customer complaints and regulatory tips to arbitration filings and internal referrals. Six teams handle them: the Internal Review Group screens every matter, then routes it to one of five national cause teams, each specializing in one risk area: high-risk firms, risk monitoring, anti-money laundering, cybersecurity, and vulnerable adults. Every team tracked the same cases in different systems, with no shared language for status, priority, or ownership.
The investigators weren't the problem. The organizational structure was, and nobody had named that yet when the engagement started.
WHAT I DID
I mapped the system before designing a single screen.
I was the Senior UX Designer on the investigation workspace, working with product and engineering across twelve investigation teams.
WHAT I OWNED
I owned research, service design, information architecture, and the workspace design, from the first investigator interview through prototype validation.
HOW I WORKED
I ran 10+ investigator interviews across twelve teams and built a matter sequence map and service blueprint before any UI work began. Neither was scoped, and both became the foundation the design was built on. I also facilitated a cross-team prioritization session in Miro, where all twelve teams ranked what they needed on one shared board.
THE JUDGMENT CALL
When research reframed the brief mid-engagement, the product manager and engineering lead needed to come along. I presented the findings as a business risk, and they did. Continuing in the original direction would have shipped faster and solved less.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
What investigators actually told us.
I interviewed 10+ investigators across all twelve teams, using the Critical Incident Technique to have them walk through specific recent cases instead of describing their work in general. The same pattern came up on every team. Investigators were copying data between systems to build a picture of a single case, and each team used its own terms for status, priority, and ownership. When a matter moved between teams, context got lost and work got duplicated. The investigators knew their jobs. The structure around them kept them from seeing each other's work.
DESIGN DECISIONS
How a case moves through FINRA, and where it breaks.
I built a matter sequence map before designing a single screen. It traced each matter from intake through the Internal Review Group to the national cause teams, showing the volume at every stage and where matters were dismissed, handed off, or stalled. Every later decision was built on that shared picture.
Matter sequence map. Seven incident types across six teams. Built before any screen was designed.
Twelve teams, one board, one set of priorities.
I facilitated a cross-team prioritization session in Miro with all twelve investigation teams. Each team placed its requested features on an impact-versus-effort matrix, so competing needs became one shared view of what mattered most and what it would take to build. For the first time, teams could see where their priorities overlapped and where they conflicted.
Cross-team prioritization session. Twelve investigation teams in one Miro board.
Tools in one location ranked first, at 90%.
When all twelve teams voted on requested features, one answer came out on top: bring rep and firm details into the workspace, so investigators stop switching between tools to build a picture of a case. Status and aging followed at 88%, and analytics and forecasting at 80%. The ranking gave product and engineering a shared, evidence-backed priority list, and it settled debates that had stalled the work.
Tools in one location scored 90%. That number ended the debate.
A service blueprint of the full investigation flow.
I built a service blueprint that traced a matter from intake through investigation, mapping what investigators did, what they saw on screen, and the systems and handoffs behind each step. It showed where cases stalled, where teams duplicated work, and which handoffs had no owner. Nobody had mapped the flow end to end before, and it became the reference product and engineering used to decide what the workspace had to support.
No one had mapped the full investigation flow before. Building without it would have meant optimizing one team's workflow at the expense of another's.
FINRA's first self-guided prototype test.
I designed and ran FINRA's first self-guided prototype validation session. Twelve teams had never given direct feedback on a prototype before, so I kept it lo-fi on purpose. Pink indicators marked which features were functional, letting investigators explore the workspace on their own without a facilitator in the room. The prototype brought the team dashboard, to-do list, milestones, and work items into one view, and what investigators clicked, skipped, and flagged shaped the build.
Lo-fi prototype. Pink indicators marked what features were functional. Investigators explored without a facilitator. First time this had ever been done at FINRA.
Matter cards that put accountability on every case.
Each matter card shows the event type, priority, age, days inactive, due date, firm, representatives, and the investigator it's assigned to, all in one row-level view. I linked priority directly to a named investigator, so ownership lives in the data model and every case has someone responsible for it. Investigators can scan status, urgency, and ownership without opening the case.
Matter cards. Priority linked to a named investigator. Accountability built into the data model, not a separate report.
The final workspace.
One workspace, three views, built on a shared data model.
The final workspace gives each role the view its work requires. Investigators see status and ownership on every row, so triage happens without opening a record. Managers see active cases and team assignments on one surface, so they can balance workload without chasing twelve teams for updates. Administrators manage teams and user settings in the same system, while organization-level governance controls what surfaces where.
Modular workspace. Investigators configure their own view. Organization-level governance controls what surfaces where.
Manager view. Active cases and team assignment share one surface, so a lead balances workload without chasing twelve teams for status.
Investigator view. Status and owner sit on every row, so triage happens without opening a single record.
OUTCOMES
One source of truth for twelve teams, and a pattern the platform adopted.
6 Tools Consolidated
One configurable workspace replaced all six. No more copying data between systems to build a single case.
Widget Architecture Adopted
The design patterns built for this dashboard became the standard across the full DXT platform.
WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY
I'd start widget governance conversations with engineering before the architecture is set. Cross-widget data sharing and state persistence weren't defined until mid-build. When the component model is this central to the product, I'd build the technical model and the design model together from day one, not in sequence.