Redesigning BigTime's Report Center

UX Director   |   Made at BigTime, 2023-24

New Report Center 

The Team: 
UX Director: Gretchen Nash
UX Designer: Emily Lee
Developers: Mat Easow, Will Thomas, Angel Rodriguez, Arief Yousif
Product Education: Brian O'Donnell, Sunny Betz
Product Manager: Steven Fernicola, Marni Syed
QA: Kristine Hermosado

The Report Center is a core tool used by firms to access, create, and manage reports. Over time, the legacy system had grown fragmented and difficult to navigate. As UX Director, I led a comprehensive redesign to modernize the experience, reduce friction, and prepare customers for the sunsetting of the legacy Report Center.

Legacy Report Center

Legacy Report Center 

The legacy Report Center is a standard landing page that supports a read-only view of standard report folders. There is no embedded search, no ability to create custom folders, or customize the arrangement of the reports in view. The legacy report center had hundreds of customer feedback requests that were overdue to be addressed with this redesign.

Discovery & Research

I oversaw UX strategy and execution across research, design, and implementation. Working with a lean team, I led 5 qualitative interviews and deployed additional surveys to uncover pain points in the current experience. One of our biggest challenges was the lack of reliable documentation, as the Report Center had evolved in production for over a decade, with features spread across teams and different systems.

So, I dove right in to all of the available resources and created a “Map of the World” capturing all existing report folders, data dictionaries, system-generated descriptions, existing Pendo customer feedback, and general artifacts. This 73-page research document became a shared foundation for design and development.

Designing a More Personalized Report Center

As part of our ongoing effort to make reporting more intuitive and customizable, we redesigned the Report Center to give customers more control over how they organize and access their reports. The new features that highlight management and organization enhancements, even introducing a dedicated Favorite Reports folder, making it easier to surface high-priority insights quickly.

These updates were guided by direct customer feedback and usage analytics, which revealed a need for greater flexibility and ease of access. To ensure a smooth rollout, we designed the feature to be opt-in via the Active Features panel, empowering System Administrators to enable it for their firm on thier own timeline.

Embedded Search
Quickly surface relevant report templates via keyword search.

Guided Report Wizard
Streamlined flow and descriptions for creating custom reports.

Favorite Reports
Bookmark frequently used reports into a custom Favorites folder for easy access.

Report Archives
Ability to Archive & Restore reports (up to 30 days) for a cleaner view.

Create Folders
Supports the ability to create new report folders, custom to each account.

Report Glossary
A quick access button was added to access the Report Template Glossary, for improved customer education on system generated report types.

Other Improvements

Beyond personalization, we introduced several more enhancements to improve ease of use, design system scaling, and wayfinding:

Legacy Folder Support
We ensured a seamless transition by maintaining support for existing folder structures, minimizing disruption for long-time customers.

Drag-and-Drop Folder Ordering
To support individual workflows, we added drag-and-drop functionality with React, giving users intuitive control over how their folders are arranged.

Active Feature Toggle
For a flexible rollout, we added a simple on/off toggle in the Active Features panel, enabling System Administrators to opt-in fluidly.

Updated Design System
This initiative drove new investments in our design system. We introduced reusable components: headers, accordion menus, cards, switches, and icon buttons. These components serve as foundational patterns for multiple product teams.

Elevating Customer Education

During our research audit, we uncovered a key opportunity: several valuable internal resources, including the Report Template Glossary, had never been shared publicly with customers. In collaboration with our education specialist, we refined the content and published it externally. This not only reduced the volume of support tickets but also empowered customers to find answers independently, aligning with our vision for a more self-sufficient user experience.

Breaking Muscle Memory & Driving Adoption

A key challenge was navigating known habits of long-time users accustomed to the legacy Report Center. With limited documentation and research, identifying critical workflows wasn’t straightforward. I partnered with the product & marketing team to launch targeted email outreach, customer segmentation, Pendo guides, in-line banners, and updated Release Notes. These efforts helped us engage active customers across firm sizes, gather actionable feedback, and promote self-activation. This ensured that customers felt prepared and educated about what to expect before firm-wide activation.

In-App Pendo Guide for Migration Campaign

Before & After

A side-by-side view of the Legacy and New Report Center updates.

The Rollout is Still Underway

Early customer feedback shows reduced time to locate reports and fewer support tickets around report creation and navigation. With a full customer migration ongoing through 2025, we’re continuing to monitor adoption and improve discovery to support a smooth transition as the Legacy Report Center is sunset throughout 2025.