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Cambridge Associates

Financial Institution

🗓️ Timeline

3 Months

✒️ Role

UX Design Intern

🧠 Skills

Design System
Financial Design
Prototyping

🤝 Team

1 Product Manager
2 UX Designers
1 PM Intern
1 UX Intern (ME!)

📜 About the firm

Cambridge Associates is a global investment firm founded in 1973 that provides investment advisory and portfolio management services to institutional investors including endowments, foundations, pension plans, and private clients. With over 50 years of experience and offices in major financial centers worldwide, the firm manages custom investment portfolios for over 850 clients globally.

📦 Internship Impact

$276B+

AUM handled through redesigned platforms

700+

components and variants designed and documented

1400+

employees using newly designed system

🪜 Projects

  1. Redesigned Cambridge Associates' design system to establish a unified component library and design standards across all internal platforms, addressing inconsistencies that had developed as the firm's digital products scaled. The system improved design-to-development efficiency and ensured consistent user experiences across the firm's suite of investment management tools.

  2. Designed an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) processing platform that streamlined how internal teams digitize, process, and store client IPS documents in the firm's database. The platform reduced manual data entry and processing time while improving accuracy and accessibility of critical client investment guidelines.

Design System

❌ Problems

  • Poor documentation - Developers struggled to implement designs without clear specifications, slowing handoff and causing inconsistencies

  • Outdated Figma architecture - Early transition from Adobe left files using legacy features, lacking modern Figma capabilities (auto-layout, variants, etc.)

  • Accessibility gaps - Inconsistent font sizes and color combinations failed to meet accessibility standards (WCAG)

  • Technical debt - Files needed modernization to be maintainable and scalable for future growth

Badges component documentation

New error color for accessibility

🔁 Process

🔍Research → 📝Define Standards → 🎨Design → ✍️Document → ✅Approval



🔍 Research

  • Analyzed existing component usage across platforms to identify inconsistencies

  • Gathered requirements from designers and developers on functionality needs

📝 Define Standards

  • Established design specifications including sizing, spacing, and interaction states

  • Defined accessibility requirements and component behavior rules

🎨 Design

  • Created component variants and states using modern Figma features

  • Ensured visual consistency and scalability across all use cases

✍️ Document

  • Wrote usage guidelines with implementation examples in the form of sticker sheets

  • Provided design specs and tokens for developer handoff

✅ Approval

  • Reviewed components with senior UX designers and iterated based on feedback

  • Added finalized components to shared library for team adoption

🏁 Next Component!

📸 Showcase

Here are some components I worked on (reach out if you want to see more)



Badges component documentation

Badges component documentation

Badges component documentation

Badges component documentation

Badges component documentation

Badges component documentation

🖼️ Mockups

*Information has been cleaned to adhere to NDA*

Main portfolio management platform (Light Mode)

Portfolio management chart view (Dark Mode)

IPS Platform

What is an IPS?

  • Investment Policy Statements are documents that outline a client's investment objectives, constraints, and guidelines. A VERY critical document for portfolio management.

❌ Problems

  • Investors, analysts, and compliance had to manually transcribed IPS information from documents into spreadsheets into database

  • Manual data entry created frequent human errors and inconsistencies

  • Time-intensive process scaled poorly as client base grew

🙂 Primary Users

  1. Analysts & Investors - Input and review IPS data, manage client information

  2. Compliance Officers - Verify accuracy and approve entries before database upload

🔬 Reserach

  • Interviewed existing analysts to understand current workflow and pain points

  • Observed manual data entry process to identify inefficiency points

  • Documented error patterns and bottlenecks in existing system

  • Gathered requirements on familiar tools (spreadsheet paradigms)

🩹 User Needs

  • Analysts: Familiar, intuitive interface (spreadsheet-like) with minimal learning curve

  • Compliance: Clear review workflow with ability to flag issues and send back revisions

  • Both: Reduced manual entry, fewer errors, faster processing

🔧 Solution: AI-Powered Processing Platform

Core Features:

  • Document Upload & AI Parsing - Upload IPS documents; AI extracts key information and presents for review

  • Spreadsheet-Style Interface - Familiar data manipulation tools (sorting, filtering, formulas) to reduce training time

  • Review & Validation Workflow - Analysts verify AI-extracted data and make corrections

  • Compliance Approval Flow - Submitted entries route to compliance officers for review; can approve or send back with feedback

  • Database Integration - Approved entries automatically upload to internal database

New Solution

🖼️ Designs

Main Login Screen

Landing Page of all accessible clients

Uploaded view of IPS document

Approved all tables from IPS

View Other Work