Finance
S&P Global
S&P 500 and Dow Jones Index Redesign
Taking one of the most complex data businesses in the world and making it simpler to test, deploy, and pay for the data customers actually need.
The problem
The business problem
S&P Global operates at enormous scale, with departments running credit assessments on entire countries. That scale brings deeply complex systems, heavy legacy, and siloed structures. The index experience needed rethinking without breaking the trust and rigour the brand depends on.
The user problem
Customers needed a clearer path through a genuinely complicated journey: testing an industry or a high level dataset, taking a portion of it, trying it in their own systems, connecting it back to S&P, then deploying it and paying for what they used. Every one of those steps carried friction.
The approach
Clarify the journey, then strip it back
We did a lot of clarifying. The work was to understand what someone is actually trying to do when they want to test an industry or interrogate a set of high level data, then strip the journey back to something they could move through with confidence.
That meant a great deal of wireframing. Working against the legacy brand while keeping the experience fresh, and getting to the point where customers could filter information simply, play with the data, and look at different parts of the business from different angles. The end designs came out clean and crisp, cutting straight to the heart of the task.
The process
Wireframes against the legacy
Layer by layer, the dataset profile, the filtering model, and the cross device behaviour were drawn out in wireframes before any visual polish. Holding the structure first meant we could test the journey honestly, without the brand carrying the weight.
The hard part
Scale and legacy
This is an organisation with vast, interconnected systems and a lot of history baked into how things work. Redesigning against that, while keeping the credibility and precision the brand is built on, meant respecting the legacy without being trapped by it.
The discipline was in simplifying the experience without losing the depth the data demands.
“Respecting the legacy without being trapped by it. Simplifying the experience without losing the depth the data demands.”
The outcomes
Clean, crisp, navigable
A clarified, simplified journey for testing, deploying, and paying for index data, built on extensive wireframing and a clear read of what customers were really trying to achieve. The final designs were clean and crisp, turning a complex, legacy heavy process into something far more navigable.
- Client
- S&P Global
- My role
- Product & UX Design Lead
- Collaborating with
- Research, Engineering, Brand & Legal
- Note
- Much of this work sits under NDA. Selected detail available on request.
