Walter

Establishing robust and scalable design foundations for an ambitious fintech startup

Role:Principal Designer

Client:Walter

Location:Vancouver, BC

Overview

Laying design foundations for an ambitious fintech product

As Principal Designer at Walter (formerly Minutebook)—legal/fintech software that centralizes corporate records for law firms and their clients—I drove the creation of foundational design practises, processes, and strategic collaboration

→Establishing scalable UX/UI foundations to support future growth
→Laying groundwork for a white-label-ready product
→Reducing cognitive overhead by optimizing workflows and navigation
→Bridging design and engineering at a highly technical startup

Early releases used minimal branding, a neutral colour palette, and were light on graphical elements.

Challenges

Untangling design knots and planning for growth

→The product was still searching for its market fit, and the design team was still figuring out how to best serve the needs of the product and its users
→Fragmented information architecture had produced inconsistent structure, navigation, layout, and interactions
→Entity relationships were not defined, and there was a lack of shared understanding around how objects were related
→The lack of a design system led to inefficiencies
→Logo and branding had not yet been developed so design needed to be flexible

My approach

Building a scalable and robust design foundation

Establishing a cohesive UX framework

→Created an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) to define the platform's core objects
→Mapped out workflows to identify gaps in error handling, edge cases
→Defined a clear Information Architecture informed by user mental models

Building a scalable and flexible UI architecture

→Designed a placeholder brand
→Developed the foundations for a modular UI system
→Evaluated separate vs. context-specific interfaces

Standardizing UX patterns for forms & interactions

→Established repeatable form patterns
→Implemented intuitive validation & error handling
→Refined auto-save & inline object creation

Aligning cross-functional teams & processes

→Worked with VP Product to design lightweight processes using ClickUp
→Produced ERDs and other visual aids to create shared vision
→Ensured UX considerations were built into feature development

Early-stage view of Walter prototype

While vetting app layout and architecture, aesthetics and polish were deliberately paced.

Results

Impact on product and process

✓We secured our first paid users within 3 months of launching the redesigned UX
✓Walter raised $3.6M in seed funding
✓Established shared understanding of information architecture and object relationships
✓Redesigned layout & navigation
✓ Established a scalable design foundation that minimized future rework