Pine
2024
Mortgage dashboard redesign
Redesigning Pine's daily dashboard around priority, so advisors and fulfillment act on what matters first instead of rebuilding it in spreadsheets.
Overview
The challenge
Evergreen's Pipeline was the dashboard the whole company ran on, leaned on hardest by mortgage advisors and the fulfillment team. It treated every deal as equal, so both teams improvised: advisors exported to spreadsheets just to see what to work on first, and fulfillment hand-sorted client images into folders within folders, client by client. Everyone started the day rebuilding a picture the tool should have given them, and that would not scale into our upcoming Wealthsimple partnership.
Before: a kanban board that gave every deal equal weight and no sense of priority.
My role
Owning it end to end
As the only designer at an early stage startup, I owned scoping, research, IA, interaction design and the V1 spec, working with my PM and two engineers. The partnership deadline meant phasing the redesign rather than shipping it all at once.
Research
Finding where the friction really sat
I audited the existing dashboards and interviewed around eight advisors plus stakeholders across the fulfillment team to find where the friction actually sat. A complication surfaced quickly: advisors and fulfillment leaned on the same dashboard but needed different things from it.
Insights
Data without direction
The dashboard weighted every deal equally, so advisors exported to spreadsheets just to decide what to work on first
Busywork before work
Both teams spent the start of each day rebuilding a picture the tool should have surfaced, and that overhead would only grow as the company scaled
Design
Designing around priority
Priority first: An expandable-row table surfaces what needs attention up front. I chose it over cards because both teams compare files side by side.
Detail on demand: Rows expand for the full file, keeping the default view scannable without hiding anything fulfillment needs.
Built for two teams: Advisors and fulfillment act on the same data differently, so I built in lightweight customization to let each shape its own view.
V1 shipped as the priority table with expandable rows: the essentials up front, detail on demand. I deliberately deferred the metrics overview and data visualization to a later phase so V1 could hit the partnership deadline and prove the core interaction first. Cutting to the interaction that solved the biggest pain, rather than shipping everything late was the right trade for the moment.
Results
Setting the launch up to learn
Because it launched close to the partnership, I set the release up to learn rather than to claim outcomes. I defined success as a reduction in time-to-first-action, fewer spreadsheet exports and higher reported ease across both teams, and I paired usage analytics with follow-up interviews so the next iteration is driven by evidence instead of assumption.
Next Steps
Where it goes from here
Add the metrics layer: Bring the deferred performance metrics and visualization in so both teams get insight alongside their task list.
Act on feedback: This was a significant change for every user, so I am analyzing responses to prioritize refinements against the pain points above.
Deepen customization by role and preference so the view stays relevant as teams scale.
