Carlyle · 04 / 05 · 2025–2026

The menus followed the database. So the analysts worked in Excel.

Lead UX on a confidential AI investment platform at The Carlyle Group. I rebuilt the product around the three kinds of analyst who used it, on a design system I moved into the production repo.

3analyst tiers moved out of Excel and into the platform

2product generations built on one token base

2teams building against the system

1:1tokens in the repo, mirrored into Figma

The work is under NDA, so this page has no screens, data or team names. I removed a task-time figure from earlier versions because I couldn’t point to the measurement behind it.

Role: Lead UX Designer, embedded on the product team
Timeline: Jun 2025 – Apr 2026, full-time contract
Team: Three front-end engineers, backend engineers, one product designer
Status: Contract run to full length

The problem

Every cross-vertical question meant a trip to Excel

The first version was built outward from the database, so its sections were the tables. When an analyst needed numbers from two verticals together, the product had no place to combine them and no check on the math. So they exported, recalculated in Excel and imported the answer back, with no audit trail.

Decision 01

Three roles, three workflows

The product had one user, “analyst.” The work had three. Entry analysts assemble and input. Senior analysts check and interpret across verticals. Leadership reviews and approves. I rewrote the information architecture around those three jobs, and each tier got a workflow tuned to its decisions.

Approvals, reviews, reporting, handoffs, permissions and audit history were each organized by who does the work.

Decision 02

Bring the Excel work inside

Copying the spreadsheet into the app would only have given analysts a worse Excel. What they needed was a place to read numbers across verticals and have them checked. So calculation moved into the platform, errors show up inside the workflow as you work, and AI helps with the cross-vertical reads.

The export, recalculate and import loop had nothing left to do.

Decision 03

The repo owns the design system

Tokens are written as JSON in the production repository and mirrored one to one into Figma. Designers and engineers use the same library, so the two can’t drift apart. The cost is that the repo wins any argument about a value.

A full V2, rebuilt from the ground up, stood on the same token base as V1.

Decision 04

A system people can use without me

I documented the system in Storybook: tokens, every component, usage rules and examples. New components had to justify their use before they went in. Breaking changes waited for testing and release review. Accessibility was part of each component’s definition of done.

Engineers and designers built against it without routing through me.

On a call

What I can walk through in person

The friction map of the old analyst flow, and how the three roles differ in practice.
Which Excel behaviors moved into the app, which were dropped, and where AI had to step back.
How intake ran when a team was under deadline, and what I’d do differently.

Under NDA: none of this can be checked on the page. The quickest way to test it is thirty minutes and specific questions.

Where to next