Visualizing social impact of investments
Dashboard
Emerging out of the new discipline of social physics, developed at the MIT Media Lab by Prof. Alex Pentland, Distilled Analytics is pioneering new methods of data science applied to credit, risk and other financial modeling. Aimed at a values-based investing market, Distilled IMPACT allows asset managers to demonstrate the social impact of their investments over time.
Challenge
Currently, methods of measuring impact have been unsuccessful and create challenges for investors. Distilled IMPACT aims to address these challenges with a transparent platform, built on rigorous ongoing research at MIT.
At the beginning of our engagement, the Distilled team had done significant work on the data analysis. With their input and expertise, we designed the key screens for a few typical user flows within just a few weeks.
The UI/UX designs needed to effectively communicate complex data stories and allow for deep dives, while being “mobile-friendly”.
Key focus areas
Create high resolution designs for the Distilled IMPACT application, including:
- Dashboard
- Multiple levels of drill down to explore a specific area of impact
Approach
After gaining an understanding of the data analysis, we collaborated with the Distilled Analytics team to craft user roles, key processes and tasks for the Distilled IMPACT application.
At each meeting, we shared design concepts which had been iterated based on feedback from the prior session. During the engagement, we also responded to feedback from Distilled clients, adding an alternate dashboard based on their suggestions.
Distilled IMPACT shows portfolio managers and investors how their investment is making an impact in the community or environment and what their investment has yielded over time.
This data gives them the ability to objectively compare their results against business objectives, and, in the future, predict the impact of investments.
The application contains a number of drill down views, allowing users to unfold more detail and gain more context on a particular metric.
Solution
In a very short timeline, we delivered high resolution designs and a clickable prototype that illustrated the key functionality and benefits of Distilled IMPACT. The clickable served two key teams:
- The business development team shared it with prospective customers to support the sales process and obtain feedback
- The product team was able to start their engineering effort based on the designs
Deliverables
- High resolution UI/UX designs for multiple levels of drill down
- Clickable prototype showing multiple user flows / interaction
