In 2012, Wolfram was approached by a Fortune 100 client with a challenge: show us a vision for incorporating Wolfram|Alpha’s computational knowledge engine into a financial broker/client workflow. Oh, and we had one week to pull together our thoughts and present them in a coherent fashion.
As I am not an expert in mutual funds or financial derivatives, I turned to internal subject matter experts to help identify the broad contours of what would be appealing to this market. Through a series of interviews, I began to develop a sense of the types of workflows performed by brokers, and where the current tools were lacking. Next, I put together a rough set of conceptual wireframes, which were discussed internally with the project team and subject matter experts. We continued to rapidly iterate on those wireframes, and I added numerous interactive elements to ensure the workflow was clear.
Download example wireframe pages (0.7mb)
After that, I worked directly with a graphic designer to turn my low fidelity wireframes into a nearly-perfect representation of our client’s brand (all in Axure!)
Even with the tight turnaround, the presentation to our client went very well. Although the tool that we envisioned has yet to materialize, the vision that we set forth has helped drive dozens of additional conversations and sales with this client.