Role:
UX / UI Designer
Team:
UX/UI Designer
Program Architect
Solution Owner
Tools:
Figma
Duration:
6 Weeks
NT Ledger Dashboard
Senior Product Designer 2025
Designing a financial dashboard to bring clarity and confidence to Northern Trust’s trade and ledger reconciliation workflows 📊💼
As part of Northern Trust’s modernization effort, we developed a tool to analyze Murex data against ledger and nostro balances—helping internal operations teams identify breaks, reconcile trades, and ensure financial accuracy at scale.
As Senior Product Designer, I led UX and UI for this tool, working closely with product owners and SME stakeholders to simplify complex workflows, structure multi-source financial data, and visualize breaks in a clear, actionable way. The dashboard reduced manual reconciliation effort and improved transparency across accounting and trade operations teams.
*This overview summarizes a complex workflow—please reach out to aaronyasko@gmail.com for more details.
2x
Analyst Efficiency
40%
Faster Issue Triage
75%
Clearer Trade Visibility
Context
Overview
Northern Trust, a global financial services firm, sought to improve visibility into its trade reconciliation process by redesigning its Murex Ledger Dashboard—an internal tool used to track and resolve trade mismatches across teams. The existing dashboard was cluttered, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate, which slowed down triage workflows and increased operational overhead.
The initiative aimed to modernize the dashboard UI, improve data clarity, and streamline resolution workflows for faster, more confident decision-making by operations and reconciliation analysts.
My Role
As a Senior Product Designer, I was brought in for a six-week engagement to lead UX and UI efforts for the new Murex Ledger Dashboard experience. I conducted a heuristic audit of the current system, co-led user interviews with traders and analysts, and designed wireframes and high-fidelity mockups focused on usability, visual hierarchy, and task efficiency.
I collaborated with Northern Trust stakeholders—including data leads, operations managers, and product owners—to ensure the new interface met the needs of both business users and compliance teams. I also worked closely with development partners to ensure designs were technically feasible and aligned with internal component libraries.
Timeline
This was a rapid 6-week design sprint with three key phases:
Week 1–2: Conducted UI audit, gathered business and user requirements, mapped legacy workflows
Week 3–4: Produced wireframes and early design concepts; validated layout changes in working sessions
Week 5–6: Delivered polished, dev-ready mockups and interaction specs; handed off design documentation to dev team
Project Brief
The legacy Murex Ledger Dashboard made it difficult to isolate key mismatches, analyze root causes, and take corrective action. Users needed clearer categorization, faster filtering, and better grouping of financial metrics. The redesign aimed to prioritize data clarity and build confidence in daily reconciliation efforts.
⚡️ The Challenge:
Designing a high-density dashboard that supports advanced filtering, issue flagging, and daily trade reconciliation—without overwhelming users or introducing risk in a regulated, high-stakes financial environment.
Design
Ledger Overview & Mismatch Detection
Redesigned the primary dashboard layout to display key trade metrics upfront, including match rate, unresolved trades, and high-risk exceptions. Introduced visual groupings, severity indicators, and hover-over tooltips to support faster prioritization.
Filter & Navigation Optimization
Created an updated filtering system with collapsible panels, quick filters, and saved views. Analysts could now filter by trade type, business unit, or status with fewer clicks and less confusion.
Interaction & Visual Clarity
Streamlined dense data tables using sticky headers, zebra striping, and consistent iconography. Focused on legibility and quick-scan layout patterns to reduce time to insight.
Takeaways
🧠 Simplify the complex with structure
This project reinforced how thoughtful visual hierarchy and layout spacing can transform noisy financial data into actionable information.
🤝 Rapid alignment requires smart collaboration
Weekly feedback sessions with Northern Trust analysts and product owners accelerated design validation and ensured the UI met real-world needs.
📐 Enterprise tools deserve great UX
Even internal dashboards benefit from elegant, functional design. A better user experience isn’t just nice to have—it directly improves efficiency and confidence for teams handling high-risk data.
“This is the first time I’ve seen the dashboard laid out in a way that actually helps drive action. Everything just feels more intuitive.”
“I used to spend half my morning pulling reports and pivoting data in Excel just to understand what was unmatched. Now I can see it all in one place.”
“Before this, we were piecing everything together in Excel. It was error-prone and time-consuming just to figure out where the issues were.”