S&P Global Platform

Centralizing Commodity Market Critical Data

The leadership of S&P Global Commodity Insights, a leading provider of critical commodity and price data, set out to centralize their extensive content to a single, powerful platform. This initiative included transitioning from PDF-based products to an integrated digital solution, incorporating aquisition services and various data features.

I was responsibe for designing key functions and pages of the platform including Search, Maps, Price pages, as well as Supply & Demand pages.

I was asked to lead the North Star initiative, definining the future look and navigation to ensure the platform's excellence.

My key contributions included:

• Collaboration: Worked closely with product owners and engaged with the broader business in rapid user testing of ideas and designs.

• Platform Evaluation: Conducted a thorough re-evaluation of the existing platform, simplifying core user journeys, refining navigation, and exploring improved methods for finding and consuming data.

• Prototyping: Developed a prototype in Sketch for a search journey centered around a sustainable commodity, Hydrogen, to showcase future capabilities.

• User Testing: Identified and tested coherent navigation models to optimize the user experience.

View 'Platts Connect' visualised (spglobal.com)⟶
View 'SP Global Dimensions' Product overview (spglobal.com)⟶

Team

Vidisha Paul, Giselle Herrera, Mike Moore, John Frazee, Jamie Matlin

SKILLS

User Research & Testing
Stakeholder Management
Product Design
Advanced Prototyping
Web Application Design

My Role

Lead UX Designer

Timeline

Q4 2020

Location

London + Remote
'United States based team'

Background

Following an intensive design journey to migrate a dozen of Commodities into the new platform, there was an obvious need to set questions for the structure of the existing Platform.

Given my involvement with the Platform from the very beginning, adopting it's LNG Service, including Petchems, Metals, Refined Oil and Shipping I was asked to work on a North Star to challenge the Navigation model that was a legacy.

The Challenge

"A Navigation model based on a dual axis resulted in levels of confusion, overload & extra cost of building redundant pages."

Sitemap

Identified page connections with development in progress at time of doing.


Below are identified clusters, which depending on commodity have differences but within the same category. These helped constrain the core pages in the navigation.

User Testing

The Navigation of the platform came with a legacy, and while it worked it had a lot of room for improvement. As the Platform expanded, several usability issues became obvious and with it a critical review of the Navigation was needed.

By researching industry practices of similar navigation, and working closely with the Market Intelligence Design Team, the team was presented with opportunities to explore a single axis Navigation.

Apart from this, it was critical to get the voice of users about the shift, the usability and willingness to adapt. The Left Nav proved very clear to use, and based on orientation is much more friendly when there are groupings and long list of pages.

Navigation

The proposed Navigation was a collaborative effort with the Market Intelligence team, as ultimately it was a model that could be used by either of the company divisions, under the same technology.

The intent was to give user maximum flexibility, the panel can be minimized and accessed by icons alone and it can be expanded to have quick reference to the icons, but not the least expand on the subcommodities.

The Vertical model allowed for an experience that is coherent and agnostic of number of elements that the nav may have.

Price/Symbol Page

From the business need to start surfacing these in unison with contextual Market Information, I guided stakeholders in the design narrative of what the page could evolve to.

As part of the process, the Price Page was user tested for every cycle of new iterations - it proved critical and very helpful to the Product owner, assuring the large developments efforts were valid and on the right path.

Maps

With my extensive experience working with CFLOW I was able to quickly iterate the advanced functionality inherent to the app, adapted to the logic of the S&P Global Platform.

Topic Page

For the prominent and most important page per Commodity I was able to rally the knowledge from my colleagues who had worked on earlier iterations and explore a more bold version of the relevant content to any given price (heavily based on latest News as well as Price variations).

Search

Through my collaboration with the Product Owner, and having tested the functionality of Search, which included a filter to navigate thousands of prices.

I included this design as it often surfaces as the key journey to arrive to a price/symbol page.

Design Deliverable

A fully working prototype with defined key journeys across the most important screens; a mechanism to allow for conversation with key decision makers within the organisation.

The prototype was built in Sketch + Invision, and completed with a timeframe of 2 months, in parallel to other design projects in motion.

Other Projects

2023

Shell Brand 2.0 ⟶

Once-in-a-Decade Brand Revamp: Fresh, Contemporary & Human

2020

S&P Global Cflow ⟶

Analyzing Commodities at Sea

2015

BBC News ⟶

Personalizing News to a Global Audience

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