Design Engineering
Showcase 2022

Coutts & Co

Tags
Wealth Management
Design Thinking
Financial Services
Figma
UI Design
Customer relationship management tools

Project Details

Student
Michaela Barker
Team
Sustainability, Strategy & Innovation / Digital Experience Design
Role
Wealth Management and Sustainability CDIO
Sector
Financial Services, Banking and Insurance
Links
E-Mail
LinkedIn

Coutts & Co is a Private Bank who specialises in tailored Wealth and Asset Management services for Ultra High Net Worth clients. Uniquely positioned as a B Corp, Coutts uses its standing to promote its sustainability-conscious perspective amongst its influential clientele through transition finance initiatives.

During my time there, I worked in their Sustainability department delivering client communications on ESG initiatives and as a UI designer developing their customer relationship management tool - Digital Work Place (DWP).

Industry 72 Barker Michaela Barker

Role and Contributions

My work in the Sustainability department involved researching competitor firms’ sustainability strategies, producing infographics to convey their product and AUM decarbonisation strategy and also planning external communications and events. My ability to distil data sheets and sector trends into digestible visuals led to 82.3% of Coutts’ CoGo report readership to attest the report provided “clarity” on how to limit their carbon footprint and the impacts of their spending habits. In the short term, this will reduce greenhouse gas emissions via avoidance of short haul travel and increased purchase of local produce. Long term benefits of this include empowering consumers to make more informed, eco friendly consumption choices and overall lower climate burden.

To strategically approach developing DWP I devised and implemented a Design System to reduce screen production lead times. This industry standard method (used in leading companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft) uses a collection of brand colours, fonts and rules to compose a library of commonly used graphical elements which can be dragged into wireframes. Avoiding continual rebuild not only increases efficiency, but also quality as reusing components ensures consistency throughout. This reduces resource budget in the short term and improves brand image and credibility in long term.

Output 300 Barker Michaela Barker
Infographic 72 Barker Michaela Barker