Fidelity From Passive Dashboard to Trading-Grade Workspace.
Turning a passive cash dashboard into a trading-grade liquidity workspace.
THE PROBLEM
A dashboard built for passive summaries, not the intraday decisions traders actually needed to make.
Fidelity's Global Cash dashboard lacked the data density and real-time clarity traders needed. They were working around the tool — manual validation, fragmented workflows, inconsistent data presentation.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
What traders actually told us.
Research started with the people closest to the problem — cash management directors, trading teams, and operations managers. What they said made clear this wasn't a dashboard refresh. It was a fundamental mismatch between the tool and the work.
THE CORE TENSION
The existing system couldn't support trading-grade decision velocity. High-stakes data needed to be trusted instantly — not cross-referenced manually.
Timestamp trust, data freshness indicators, and multi currency visibility were absent or buried — adding friction at exactly the wrong moment.
MY ROLE
Embedded Senior UX Designer within Fidelity's Center of Excellence, leading the full redesign of Global Cash.
WHAT I OWNED
Full scope of Global Cash UX. Architecture, layout, interaction patterns, and implementation specs covering the trading workspace, notifications, alerts, and help system.
HOW I WORKED
Cross-functional collaboration with traders, cash managers, product, and engineering — specs adopted across the Fixed Income ecosystem.
THE CONSTRAINT
Every pattern had to remain consistent across Active Trader system components. No isolated solutions.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
What Traders Actually Needed
Understanding the Workflow Before Designing It
Before any wireframe, the work began with the people using the system daily. Contextual inquiry surfaced workflows no requirements doc had captured — and became the foundation for every IA decision that followed.
Stakeholder Interview Notes
Jen· Director, Cash Management
Compares yesterday's 28-day cash number to today's as a daily task
Needs to evaluate cash swings currently requires jumping between two apps
Would benefit from drill-down detail directly within Global Cash Available Cash tab
Uses Single Currency view primarily; Multi Currency view for weekly balance reviews
Cash Avail funds refresh every 30 minutes non-cash sources update once daily
Wants more real-time update capability
PROCESS
Seven phases from discovery to delivery.
Partnered with traders, product, engineering, and the CoE to validate real workflows, improve data density, and establish governed patterns that support trading-grade clarity across Global Cash.
1
FINDING
Contextual inquiry across traders and cash managers to surface latent needs users couldn't articulate.
INSIGHT
Contextual inquiry across traders and cash managers to surface latent needs users couldn't articulate.
DESIGN
Contextual inquiry across traders and cash managers to surface latent needs users couldn't articulate.
AG GRID · THE RIGHT FOUNDATION
Inline controls, shared views, column order
AG Grid solved all four latent needs in one architectural decision — inline sort/filter, shared team views, and column ordering without custom engineering.
CROSS-TEAM ALIGNMENT
One spec, adopted by three aligned teams
Specs adopted across the Fixed Income ecosystem — every pattern documented so no team rebuilt what another had already solved.
ANGULAR STACK FLUENCY - WHY IT MATTERED
Designing with the stack, not around it
Global Cash runs on Angular with PrimeNG as the component base. Understanding that stack meant designing specs where the implementation and the design told the same story — no invisible workarounds. PrimeNG v17 selected for stability across Fidelity's validated environments.
MY ROLE
This engagement included a major design system contribution a responsive toolbar component built for trading-grade density, reused across Global Cash, onboarding, and reporting. PrimeNG v17 selected for stability across Fidelity's validated environments.
WHAT WAS FOUND
Unpredictable collapse, clipped controls, no action hierarchy
The toolbar collapsed unpredictably, clipped controls at smaller viewports, and gave users no clear sense of which actions mattered most.
WHAT WAS DESIGNED
Reusable pattern across trading, onboarding & reporting
A responsive toolbar with usage-based action hierarchy, predictable overflow patterns, and modular logic across breakpoints — PrimeNG-based, trading-grade.
OUTCOMES
A platform traders could trust — and a model the organization could build on.
AG Grid adoption unlocked four latent needs simultaneously
Shared local and team grid views improved transparency
Reduced cognitive load across high-stakes decision points
Reduced manual validation through persistent data-freshness indicators
"The redesign elevated Global Cash from a data summary tool to a trading-grade liquidity workspace — recognized by Center of Excellence as the foundation for future Fixed Income modernization."
PROJECT GALLERY
The work — from research to shipped workspace
Layout Research
Dynamic Data Research
Design System Research
Navigation & IA Audit
Data Trust & Status Audit
Grid Density Analysis
HDS Toolbar — Responsive Behavior Spec
Zone Collapse Hierarchy
Action Bar — Responsive Behavior Spec
Multi-Panel Trading Workspace
Data Approval — Color Code System
Help — Large Trade Notifications
Final Trading Workspace — Dark Theme
AG Grid with Conditional Formatting
Projected Cash Panel — Compact View
Prototype
What I'd do differently
Start system evaluation earlier and map trader mental models before touching layouts. The biggest friction points were workflow sequencing issues — only visible once prototypes were in front of active traders.