Architect is iCapital’s portfolio analytics platform for investment advisors who use alternative investments (“alts”) in their strategies. I owned product design for the platform, leading discovery, information architecture, interaction design, prototyping, and usability validation.

This case study focuses on one discovery that overturned assumptions and significantly changed how the product should be viewed: portfolio comparison was far more important to advisors than its position in the existing experience suggested. 

My research showed that this secondary feature should be the core hub around which other features were organized, leading to a redesigned experience where advisors could easily enter, manage, and return to portfolio comparisons from anywhere in the product, rather than as a remote destination that was harder to navigate to. 

The challenge

Architect was developed to bring together capabilities from two existing iCapital products into a more cohesive portfolio analytics experience.

The challenge wasn’t simply to replicate existing functionality, which centered on stress-testing model portfolios across historical and potential scenarios. We needed to understand which capabilities were genuinely valuable to advisors, how they fit into their workflows, and where the existing products created friction in accomplishing their goals.

Understanding the users

Before defining the new experience, I needed to understand what advisors were trying to accomplish, which capabilities they valued most, and where existing workflows fell short.

I conducted two concurrent research efforts:

Moderated discovery research

I conducted 1-on-1 sessions with users of both existing tools, 12 investment advisors specializing in alternative investments.

The sessions explored how advisors constructed and evaluated portfolios, what information they needed to make decisions, and how they communicated those decisions to clients.

Unmoderated feature research

I also conducted a ranking exercise with 25+ users of both existing tools to understand which features were stronger than others, and why.

Together, these research efforts helped establish priorities for the new product by revealing the underlying needs that shaped the behavior of our users.

A key insight

One of the most important findings was that advisors didn’t primarily need to show clients how a custom portfolio might perform in isolation.

They needed to understand how that portfolio performed relative to other portfolios with different strategies.

Advisors were already creating these comparisons through inefficient workarounds in the existing tools.

That suggested an important shift in prioritization: portfolio comparison shouldn’t be treated as a secondary feature. It needed to become a fundamental part of how advisors worked in Architect.

Design strategy

After translating the research findings into information architecture and user flows, I began design exploration with a core principle: if comparison was fundamental to evaluating a portfolio, there should be multiple paths into it throughout Architect.

I wanted to achieve that in three ways:

Make comparison accessible

Advisors should be able to initiate portfolio comparison from multiple points in the product rather than having to navigate to a single place to get started.

Make setup flexible

The process of selecting and changing portfolios for comparison should be frictionless, so advisors could quickly construct any scenario they wanted to evaluate.

Make iteration easy

Advisors should be able to edit portfolio contents within a comparison workflow and quickly see updated results, reducing the need to navigate between disconnected areas of the product.

Design exploration

I sketched out low-fidelity prototypes around the primary user flows to explore how portfolio comparison could work as an integrated part of the broader Architect experience.

Early hallway testing helped surface some fundamental design questions:

• How should comparison behave across different entry points and workflows?

• How could users modify the portfolios they were comparing without disrupting their analysis?

• How should comparison maintain context as users moved between different areas of the product?

• What interaction patterns could make comparison feel integrated without competing with other primary workflows?

These questions helped shape a consistent interaction model that could scale across Architect. Before moving into high-fidelity design, I needed to validate that model with real users.

Validation

I conducted usability testing with internal and external users to evaluate whether the redesigned workflows made it easy to complete primary portfolio comparison tasks.

The results consistently validated the core interaction model while surfacing opportunities for refinement. After incorporating those changes, I handed off the low-fidelity designs to a dedicated UI designer for high-fidelity polish using the existing design system. Where new workflows required unsupported capabilities, we introduced new components and patterns.

The resulting experience

Architect brought capabilities from the two legacy tools into a more cohesive portfolio analytics experience.

The research-led redesign elevated the role of portfolio comparison specifically, enabling advisors to:

• Initiate comparison from anywhere in the product

• Configure and modify portfolios without leaving the comparison workflow

• Add or remove portfolios without leaving the comparison workflow

• Quickly view updated comparison results

• Move between portfolio analysis and comparison without losing context

More broadly, the work demonstrated the importance of discovery research, which reveals what users actually need, creating the foundation for better design decisions.

UX tools used

Figma · FullStory · Maze · Dovetail · Miro