Fund data exploration web application
Due to the confidential nature of the project, screenshots cannot be shared publicly. The product is an internal, non-public solution and the presented work is therefore shown without original product screenshots.
Compass is a data platform within Clearstream, part of Deutsche Börse Group’s post-trade and fund services ecosystem. It gives Distribution Partners and Fund Providers a single place to search, monitor and report on fund data that supports regulated distribution processes across Europe.
Over a year-long engagement, I worked primarily as the UX designer responsible for shaping the Compass experience while collaborating closely with product owners, domain experts and development teams. My focus was straightforward: making complex financial data easier to understand, navigate and act upon.
Clarity in Complex Data
Helping financial professionals explore, monitor and understand large volumes of fund data without losing the context behind it.
Fund data carries real financial and regulatory consequences. For Distribution Partners and Fund Providers, Compass serves as a source of truth. In this environment, poor visibility or unpredictable system behaviour isn’t just a usability issue — it’s an operational risk.
Designing for this context meant treating clarity, traceability and consistency as core product requirements rather than visual improvements.
Compass was designed for financial professionals, not casual consumers. Its users spend their days working with large datasets, monitoring changes and making decisions based on highly detailed information.
That shaped one of the most important assumptions behind the product: users didn’t want complexity removed. They wanted it organised.
Predictability and control consistently proved more valuable than automation or aggressive simplification.
Enterprise platforms operate under very different constraints from consumer products. Users regularly work with thousands of records, multiple overlapping change types and workflows that demand accuracy.
My approach was built around four principles:
State-driven UX — interfaces should reflect the actual state of the system rather than assumptions about user intent.
Predictability over automation — workflows should remain explicit and understandable, especially when decisions have downstream consequences.
Auditability — changes and actions should remain transparent and traceable.
Scalability — interaction patterns should remain effective regardless of data volume.
Improving change visibility — One of the biggest challenges was the lack of a centralised overview of fund and provider updates. I introduced segmented views that separated all changes, fund changes and provider changes, allowing users to switch between broad and focused perspectives without losing context.
Designing for high-density data — Tables often contained thousands of records, multiple filtering dimensions and extensive metadata. Rather than reducing the amount of information, I focused on information hierarchy, scanning behaviour and filtering patterns that supported how financial professionals already worked.
Creating a connected experience — Compass was closely linked to NNA, the operational platform responsible for underlying data changes. One of the challenges was ensuring that both products felt like parts of a single ecosystem rather than two separate systems presenting different versions of the same information.
The redesign improved the discoverability of fund changes and reduced the cognitive effort required to navigate complex datasets. It reduced the amount of manual tracking required from users, strengthened trust in system behaviour and helped make fund data more accessible across the broader Clearstream ecosystem.
Compass reinforced a principle that continues to influence my work today: professional users rarely want less information. They want better structure.
In regulated, data-heavy environments, simplicity doesn’t come from removing complexity. It comes from organising it.