Beacon Compass
Finding the right advisors faster
A new comparative analytics experience within BrightScope's Beacon platform, designed to help asset managers identify high-value advisor prospects within specific investment categories. By bringing together complex retirement plan, investment, and advisor data, Beacon Compass helps sales teams compare opportunities, uncover market patterns, and more strategically prioritize where to focus their distribution efforts.
How might we help asset managers quickly identify and evaluate the advisors most likely to be valuable sales prospects? Beacon contained a wealth of retirement, advisor, and fund data, but finding the right opportunities required navigating complex information and multiple criteria. The challenge was to design a new comparative analytics experience that made this data easier to search, filter, compare, and act on—while also modernizing the overall Beacon experience. Because asset managers often access Beacon while traveling or meeting with clients, the new experience also needed to work seamlessly on mobile, adapting complex data and workflows to a smaller, touch-based screen without sacrificing functionality.
The goal was to transform a complex collection of market and advisor data into an experience that helped users quickly understand where the strongest opportunities were and why.
I started by understanding how asset managers currently identify and evaluate advisor prospects, looking for friction across search, filtering, and accessing the right data. From there, I explored and iterated on multiple concepts to make complex information easier to navigate and act on—including map-based search, advanced filtering, clearer information hierarchy, richer advisor profiles, and real-time fund data within the workflow. I also used the project as an opportunity to evolve Beacon's overall UI, introducing updated patterns and visual enhancements to create a more modern, cohesive experience. Throughout the process, I partnered closely with cross-functional teams to balance user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.
The project moved from concept to a working MVP, with the core experience shaped through iterative prototyping and close collaboration with internal stakeholders and Engineering. I used the prototypes to walk stakeholders through key workflows, gather feedback, test assumptions, and refine the experience before development. The prototypes also allowed me to explore the finer details of the experience, including subtle micro-interactions, transitions, and purposeful animation that would make the product feel more responsive and intuitive. As priorities shifted, the team focused on delivering the core functionality while some of the planned UI refinement and visual polish was deferred. While the final MVP didn't reflect the full design vision, the work established a strong foundation for advisor discovery and demonstrated a more intuitive, data-driven approach to identifying sales opportunities.
