When UX meets FP&A: secrets from my 3-year journey working alongside finance professionals.
It's not just about aesthetics; it's about crafting user experiences that redefine financial interactions and impact that bottom line –from spreadsheets to seamless user journeys, it's been a wild but highly rewarding ride, here are some tips for any other designers considering the FP&A sector for their next position...
So first of all – what is FP&A?
Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) is the strategic architect of corporate finance, seamlessly weaving together data analytics and financial foresight. It's the wizard behind the curtain, using budgeting, forecasting, and trend analysis to predict a company's financial future.
FP&A transforms raw numbers into a compelling narrative, decoding the mysteries of balance sheets and income statements. In essence, it's the Sherlock Holmes of finance, turning uncertainty into a strategic advantage and guiding businesses through the complex maze of economic landscapes.
There's an awful lot for an FP&A professionals to learn so few in my experience have the time or inclination to have trained in design or studied at an art college so there's a huge potential for talented designers to make really positive impact in FP&A software design area but you will need to put some work in and learn from industry experts to keep up...
So how to survive and thrive in the complex and demanding world of FP&A as a designer?
1. MAKE FRIENDS WITH A DOMAIN EXPERT
Even if you're an experienced UX or product designer, working in finance can sometimes be challenging. A domain expert, by definition, is someone who knows much more about the 'domain' you are designing for than you do.
Seek out help form one of these roles will quickly help your progress: CFO, FP&A Manager, Finance Analyst, then convince your leadership that you need to work regularly as a pair on your product design research.
Objective feedback on your wireframes and user flows from your domain expert will be invaluable before presenting to stakeholders for review, they can help you look good when it matters and add some solid FP&A weight to your design decisions.
Feeding back your progress to your line managers and leadership teams makes them feel like part of the solution and can overcome any objections that may roadblock your progress, involve them in the project as much as possible and reference their ideas in any workshops or presentation of your progress, they will appreciate the recognition, be much more likely to support you in the longer term if they feel you have listened to their advice.
2. READ UP BEFORE YOU START AND THEN KEEP READING
As a designer you are probably unlikely to have studied finance in much detail, and you will now be working with teams and individuals operating at a high level of financial expertise, designing complex structures and business models with hard-to-pin-down concepts and confusing wording (for a designer) such as dimension, indicator, input, value etc.
I would highly recommend reading any book on basic accounting and finance, but here are a few I have found particularly useful.
I listened to podcasts when I go running, I found this one particularly useful:
The excellent Paul Barnhurst also appearing on our Blox podcast in the near future.
3. YOU'RE A DESIGNER SO DON'T BE AFRAID TO GET CREATIVE
As a UX or product designer, I have been hired to make your FP&A project easier to understand and better looking than the finance team can create themselves. You don't need to know all the intricate details of your finance product, but you do need to make it user-friendly and attractive to users.
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You may find the sheer intellect of you colleagues a bit intimidating at times (I can hear them all laughing now) but remember - you are a designer, you have talent and impressive design skills which can make them look great, or they would not have hired you in the first place.
ALWAYS start with very low-res wireframe and whiteboarding sessions, a non permanent whiteboard pen will be your other best friend. Get everyone on the project involved drawing on that board (remotely on Figjam or Miro, but in person is always best). That way, you will receive valuable insights whilst bonding with your stakeholders, removing barriers, and making them feel like their contributions, however small, are a valuable part of the solution.
To make your FP&A design project a success, you will need the backing of the whole team, including your product manager and dev teams who will need to interpret your designs and set requirements for the product build.
A well-planned and productive workshop or wireframing session can lay solid foundations for the easier part – higher-res prototypes that you can dazzle your stakeholders with before progressing to user testing and live user feedback.
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