Work experienceInternal tool · Company of about 30 · 2025

VortexNet:
Finance dashboard.

Role
UI/UX Design Intern
Timeline
Jun – Oct 2025
Platform
Internal desktop tool
My scope
The landing-screen navigation, and the information hierarchy and consolidation behind it
Implemented
Both the landing screen and the sidebar navigation shipped during the internship
Result
In task-based testing with 10 colleagues, finding the day's work dropped from about 20–30 seconds to about 8
Compare before & after Design decisions
Close-up of the landing screen: four CNY totals, the cash movement chart with its legend, the settlement schedule, and the first queue row with its next action
Work

01

User pain points

VortexNet is in internet finance, so its internal systems carry a great deal of data to work through. The work people handle every day sat in the same layer as reports and administration, and opening the tool in the morning did not get them to what they needed.

  • A flat menu mixed different kinds of content together

    Fourteen entries put reports, operational queues and administration in one layer, which left people confused and made it hard to read.

  • Labels read as if written for the system

    Abbreviations like PEND_CNT are not suited to the people who have to read them.

  • The overview emphasized records

    In practice a transaction table filled the entire screen, with nothing setting out what needed handling.

02

Design decisions

  1. The first hypothesis

    After talking it over with my teammates, we decided to start with color: adjust it across the different kinds of content and the different levels, and let color carry the hierarchy.

  2. The early test

    The first round of testing involved 10 employees, and it showed that our first read was wrong. Color did not make the priority of the information clear, and because the overall text layout had not changed, people were no faster in the test.

  3. The revised decision

    After discussing it with my teammates and my manager, we decided to look further into the information hierarchy, build the levels through type and layout, and add some charts to draw attention.

Explore a metric-hierarchy study

This reconstruction shows the shift in visual emphasis: the primary figures lead, and the supporting metrics follow.

Six equally weighted metric cells with abbreviated names
Before
Collections and Outflows as primary figures with four secondary metrics
After

Dividing the information hierarchy

Dividing the information hierarchy needed more thought. We dropped the old scheme, which filed daily reports, monthly reports and confirmations together because they were the same kind of document.

Our aim was to make people faster, so we watched which categories they opened first to check at the start of the day, and which ones mattered less. Those observations set the new division of the hierarchy.

Existing information grouped by document type across Reports, Data center and Analysis
Before
The information reorganized into what to watch daily, what to review periodically, and what to set up
After

Information architecture

Three task groups. A separate admin entry.

The reconstructed navigation has nine main entries grouped by task. Accounts, permissions, configuration and logs all sit under Admin.

Fourteen navigation entries in a flat list
BeforeReports, operations and administration at one level.
Nine entries grouped into Monitor today, Reconcile and Review over time, with four separate admin destinations
AfterRegrouped and consolidated, with administration split out on its own.
Inspect the landing-screen hierarchy
Net cash flow, Collections, Payouts and Pending settlement, with explicit CNY units and supporting context
AfterFour totals with distinct meanings: net cash flow, collections, payouts and pending settlement. Currency and supporting context stay on screen.

04

High-fidelity redesign

Opening the dashboard each morning now gives a clearer view of the work and the numbers

The landing screen shows the cash summary, settlement progress and a priority-ordered work queue at once. The toggle below compares the version that shipped with the one I refined afterward.

The delivered build: nine navigation entries grouped into Monitor today, Reconcile and Review over time, with Today's overview showing four named totals, a cash movement chart, a settlement list and a queue of open work.

05

User testing

In the second round of testing, the same tasks took noticeably less time after the redesign.

I invited 10 colleagues to use the new interface and dashboard, gave them a set of tasks, and asked them some questions.

01

Find a failed event, then open one transaction inside it

Finding the failed event in the left-hand menu and then opening one transaction's details went from 20–30 seconds to about 8.

02

Find a specified item in the left-hand list

This went from about 10 seconds to about 5.

03

During testing we found that people who had used the old dashboard for a long time were a little out of their depth with the new one, and would go looking in the old places out of habit. We also tested one new user, who was clearly faster on the new dashboard. On that basis we think the change improved how the dashboard is used.

06

Constraints & trade-offs

This design works within real operating constraints. In this iteration the data could not update in real time and came with some delay, so I think adding a timestamp was the best answer available.

There are trade-offs in the navigation too. The grouping is clearer, but the locations differ from what people knew, and some of them needed longer to find things. I think that is still within a normal, manageable range.

At the same time, a finance company moves a great deal of money and carries a great many numbers, and the information on the dashboard still looks fairly cluttered.

Within a single day, the focus in the morning, at midday and in the evening is not the same. The current arrangement simplifies the morning to some degree, but it does not yet help much with afternoon work, or with tasks that come up unexpectedly.