Designing Better Estate Planning Decisions
Project
Estate Strategy Simulator
Year
2023-2024
As Northern Trust migrated its Wealth Management platform to the cloud, Wealth Plan Optimizer became a key initiative in achieving feature parity before retiring the legacy application. As lead designer and researcher, I partnered with advisors, product managers, and engineers to redesign the experience from the ground up. In the end, I helped transform a strategy-focused calculator into a decision-support tool that helps advisors compare estate planning scenarios and communicate recommendations with greater clarity.
Scope of Work
The Opportunity.
Modernizing a legacy tool for the next generation of wealth planning.
The legacy Wealth Plan Optimizer allowed advisors to model estate planning strategies, but the experience had changed very little over time. As Northern Trust continued its migration to the cloud, the redesign presented an opportunity to move beyond feature parity and rethink how advisors explored and communicated planning strategies.
Rather than simply rebuilding existing functionality, we focused on creating a modern experience that better supported collaborative client conversations while laying the foundation for continued investment across the Wealth Planning ecosystem.
Legacy Feature
Research & Key Insights.
Research at a Glance
Wealth Advisors
Trust Advisors
Multiple rounds of concept testing
Interactive prototypes
Cross-functional workshops
MVP validation
Key Insights
Advisors needed context, not just calculations.
The legacy experience centered around individual strategy outputs, making it difficult to understand how recommendations affected a client's overall estate. Advisors wanted richer context that helped explain the bigger financial picture.
Estate planning is inherently comparative.
Rather than evaluating one strategy at a time, advisors naturally compared multiple planning scenarios while discussing trade-offs with clients. Before-and-after visualization became critical to confident decision-making.
Simplicity builds confidence.
Research consistently favored streamlined workflows, clear visual hierarchy, and meaningful comparisons over exposing every possible calculation or configuration.
Research Artifact, Overall Value of Feature
The Solution.
Compare Before You Decide
Rather than focusing on individual strategy calculations, the redesigned experience centered around before-and-after comparisons. Visual summaries of projected estate value, transferred wealth, and estimated estate tax helped advisors immediately understand the impact of each recommendation within the context of a client's overall estate.
New Landing Page
Simplify Strategy Exploration.
Adding, managing, and comparing estate planning strategies was redesigned around the advisor's natural workflow. Streamlined interactions reduced unnecessary complexity while making it easier to explore common planning scenarios and adjust recommendations throughout the conversation.
Adding a Strategy
Annual Gifting Entry/Edit Page
Enable/Disable Strategy Controls
Design for Better Conversations.
The product evolved from a calculation tool into a collaborative discussion experience. Clear visualizations, contextual information, and simplified comparisons allowed advisors to spend less time interpreting numbers and more time helping clients understand their options.
Estate tax Tab Calculations
Building a stronger foundation for Wealth Planning.
The redesigned experience established the foundation for future estate planning capabilities, including additional planning strategies, continued usability refinements, and tighter integration with the broader Wealth Planning platform as Northern Trust expanded its cloud ecosystem.
New Strategy Exploration
Reflection.
This project reinforced that enterprise modernization is about more than recreating existing functionality.
While feature parity was the business objective, the real opportunity came from questioning how the product supported advisor decision-making. By grounding the redesign in research, we shifted the experience from presenting isolated calculations to helping advisors compare options, communicate trade-offs, and guide more informed conversations with their clients.
