Carlyle · Lead UX · 2025–2026
Got investment analysts out of Excel.
A schema-first MVP forced analysts out of the platform every time the math required cross-vertical reads or recalculation. Excel was the workaround and the bottleneck. The redesign rebuilt the product around how analysts actually work, with real-time error checking and AI-assisted calculations inside the flow.
What I led
- UX strategy, new experience design, and legacy modernization across the platform. Senior execs and analyst teams as the primary users.
- Information architecture rewrite. From schema-first to user-centered: organized around how analysts move through approvals, reviews, and decisions, not how the data model is structured underneath.
- Scalable workflows across approvals, reporting, reviews, handoffs, dashboards, collaboration, permissions, and audit history. Each one absorbed a piece of the Excel-export-recalculate-reimport loop into the platform.
- Real-time error checking inside the workflow, so analysts caught calculation problems before they propagated. AI assistance on cross-vertical data interpretation and the calculations Excel used to run.
- AI-assisted design and development workflow established as a repeatable practice. Tightened the loop between design and engineering and reduced time-to-delivery.
The design system
A full enterprise design system for the platform, built from the foundation up. React and TypeScript on a Material-UI base, with deep overrides so every component matched the product's voice rather than reading as MUI default. Token structure across color, type, spacing, motion, and surface, feeding both the Figma library and the production code from the same source.
Atomic components first. Shared patterns built on top, deployed across approvals, reporting, dashboards, audit history, and the rest of the surface set. Usage documentation, migration notes, and a contribution model for the engineering team. Figma library and GitHub repo kept in lockstep so design decisions landed in code without translation drift.
Confidential by design
The product, the screens, the data, the team are all under NDA. The mechanism is public: getting analysts out of Excel and into the app, with real-time error checking and AI assistance on the math, on top of a design system that kept the platform coherent as it scaled. Visuals don't appear here because none have been cleared, and I'm not going to fabricate them.
The full version, on a call
The friction map from the pre-redesign analyst flow. The calls on which Excel features to absorb into the app and which to remove from the workflow entirely. Where AI assistance on the math helped and where it had to step back. The token-and-override architecture that let MUI carry weight without dictating the look. The bridge between Figma and the dev repo that kept the design system honest in both places.