Description
Unilever Pension Funds in The Netherlands publishes a monthly risk report that is presented to the board of trustees. The information in this report is the base for significant decision-making. The publication of this report required a lot of manual work that was prone to errors. Unilever Pension Funds desired a secure, online tool where reports could be created and sent out rapidly. Overall challenges were the data import and control and the prevention of human mistakes.
For more information on this project, read the case on the VI Company website.
This project is realized in collaboration with Alexander van Veelen, Sjors Spoorendonk and Ruud Renssen at VI Company.
This project is realized in collaboration with Alexander van Veelen, Sjors Spoorendonk and Ruud Renssen at VI Company.
Due to the sensitive nature of the information, all data or charts shown in this case are dummies and not based on real data.
Context
The risk report is presented monthly to the board in a thirty-minutes meeting, where the report is shown on a TV screen. It also had to be available on iPad and suitable for print so members could read along. That’s why the application functions as a presentation tool. It shows an index on the left side, and the current slide to the right. The differences between this tool and PowerPoint are the custom charts and other custom options (like monitoring of the members’ views).
Design Challenges
The biggest design challenge was presenting the complex data and the creation of custom charts. We sought for the best way to display the data in its context. What is the most important thing the user wants to see? Does he want to compare the volume, or does he only need to know if something is right or wrong?
Also, he board of trustees’ members had diverse specializations and therefore were interested in different levels of information on a subject. For this reason charts were interactive and contained layers with in-depth information.
Lessons Learned
- Determine the gravity of the project. Start with the biggest challenge.
- The understanding of the financial charts is absolutely necessary to redesign the data visualisations.
- Design charts for color blindness (for instance by adding shapes to the colors).
- Keep in mind the context where the application will be used. In the case of this project all information was shown on a TV so a bigger font size was required.
