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
Walter

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.
Walter app

Results

Impact on product and process

  • We secured our first paid users within 3 months of launching the redesigned UX
  • Walter raised $3.5M in seed funding
  • Established shared understanding of information architecture and object relationships
  • Redesigned layout & navigation
  • Established a scalable design foundation that minimized future rework

Work

Tripadvisor

Empowering over 300k business operators on the world's largest travel platform

Pulse Energy Engagement Dashboard

Ground-up redesign of a real-time energy monitoring and engagement dashboard for university campuses

Walter

Establishing scalable design foundations for an ambitious legal tech startup

Pulse Energy

Leading the design team for a suite of industry-leading energy analytics and management tools used by the world's largest utilities

SMART Technologies

Redesign and restructuring a reseller portal to streamline access to critical resources for thousands of global users

Nissan-Infiniti USA

Building a seamless interactive vehicle configuration and dealer connection tool

Other

Miscellaneous client work, personal projects, experiments, and random curiosities