Moody’s 360
Making company risk analysis easy and accessible for small and medium business owners
Project Details
Company
Moody’s
Duration
11 months (Aug 2022-July 2023)
Team
1 PM, 2 designers*, 1 UX researcher, 8 devs
*While I worked with another designer, all work shown in this case study is my own.
Main Skills
UX Research, UX Strategy, UX Design, UI Design
Assessing risk is difficult
Small to medium sized business owners often struggle to assess the risk of doing business with another company because they lack the resources to make deals with bigger rating companies.
Problem statement
How might we help procurement managers better assess the risk of doing business with a certain company?
My Role
My role was to be the UX lead and manager on this project, as I was delivering designs, running user interviews, and managing a second designer.
Legacy Designs
Working with an Existing Design
Moody’s had hired a third party agency to design the first iteration of said browser extension (pictured below), which contained a company’s contact information, its associated watchlist status (e.g. if it’s on a sanctions list), four different types of risk and their associated levels, as well as the overall risk level.
Moderated User Testing
UserZoom Testing Reveals New Feedback
Through user testing that UserZoom, a third party agency, conducted, we discovered that our users wanted more firmographic information about the company (e.g. number of employees, financial history, industry, etc.), and we learned that the term “ESG”, which stood for Environmental, Social, and Governance, was not well understood. In addition, climate risk was a divisive term, and macroeconomic risk didn’t resonate with any of the procurement managers they tested with.
Prototype
New Feedback Guides Next Design Iteration
In response to these findings, I worked on creating the next iteration of the extension with a few alterations. First, I and the team decided that instead of the extension appearing as a small popover, it would appear as a side drawer with more vertical space to play with. Second, we decided to add firmographic information about the company, financial history, and other risk factors we hypothesized would be relevant.
Unmoderated Usability Study
Over half the participants (8/14) could make a quick go/no-go decision about a business
Through the UserZoom/UserTesting platform, I drafted an unmoderated usability study to run two sessions with an anticipated 15 participants each. We ended up collecting a total of 14 valid participants who completed the study all the way through, with 8 participants closely matching the procurement persona.