Vector

Overview

Vector is a global financial infrastructure platform that enables businesses to collect, manage, convert, and move money across borders.

By bringing global payment networks, multi-currency wallets, and banking infrastructure into a unified platform, Vector removes the operational complexity of managing international financial transactions across multiple providers.

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1. AIDesk research (AI-assisted)
3. Problem framing
5. Wireframing
7. AIFirst concepts (AI-assisted)
9. High-fidelity design
11. Engineering handoff (final decision)

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The Problem

Managing cross-border payments often requires businesses to operate across multiple financial providers, each serving a different purpose.

A business might use one provider to receive international payments, another to hold funds in foreign currencies, and a third to facilitate payouts. While these services solve individual needs, the fragmented experience creates operational inefficiencies.

Businesses are left navigating disconnected dashboards, tracking balances across multiple accounts, and managing additional steps to complete transactions.

The design challenge was to bring these fragmented financial operations into one cohesive experience without introducing the complexity of the underlying infrastructure to the user.

The Solution

We approached Vector as more than a payment dashboard. The goal was to create a central workspace where businesses could manage their international financial operations with clarity and control.

The experience was structured around three core currency capabilities:

• Collection currencies: Receive payments from customers and partners across supported markets.
• Funding currencies: Add money to accounts through available funding methods.
• Payout currencies: Move money to beneficiaries across supported countries and currencies.

Rather than exposing users to the complexity of different payment networks, the interface prioritizes the task they want to accomplish.

Users can select a currency, specify a destination, and initiate a transfer through a consistent experience, regardless of the underlying payment infrastructure.

This approach established a scalable foundation for supporting multiple currencies, payment methods, and international markets without requiring users to learn a different workflow for each.

Design Process

01. Research & Problem Framing

Before moving into interface design, I focused on understanding the operational challenges businesses face when managing money across borders.

I incorporated AI-assisted desk research into my workflow to accelerate the exploration of existing financial products, identify common interaction patterns, and break down complex requirements into actionable design considerations.

Three areas emerged as priorities.

Reducing friction during onboarding

For a business-focused financial platform, the time between registration and first meaningful use is an important part of the experience.

The initial onboarding flow introduced unnecessary steps before users could access the product.

I simplified the initial experience into a single step, prioritizing the information required to get businesses started while accounting for the platform's broader verification requirements.

The objective was to reduce unnecessary friction without compromising the trust and compliance expectations of a financial product.

Establishing clarity across the dashboard

A financial dashboard needs to communicate more than information. It needs to give users confidence and a clear understanding of their money.

I worked through the platform's functional requirements to distinguish what users needed immediately from what could remain accessible through secondary interactions.

The dashboard architecture prioritized account visibility, wallet balances, and frequently used actions.

A key consideration was ensuring that balances were clearly represented and consistently positioned. When businesses are managing funds across currencies, ambiguity in how money is displayed can quickly undermine trust.

Making exchange rates visible and actionable

Exchange rates directly influence how businesses make international payment decisions.

Rather than treating rates as secondary information, I explored how they could be integrated into the dashboard to provide useful, real-time context without competing with primary financial information.

The challenge was finding the right balance between visibility, information density, and usability.

Across these decisions, accessibility, consistency, and clarity remained central to the design direction.

02. Exploration, Wireframing & AI-Assisted Iteration

With the core problems defined, I moved into early sketches and collaborative wireframing sessions with the engineering team.

Involving engineering early helped us align on the intended experience, discuss technical considerations, and identify potential implementation constraints before committing to high-fidelity designs.

To accelerate exploration, I also integrated a custom Claude skill into my design workflow.

The skill takes structured product requirements and draws from established interaction patterns, previous design work, and curated references to generate initial interface concepts.

This gave us a faster starting point for evaluating layout options, information hierarchy, and possible interaction models.

AI accelerated the exploration process, but design judgment remained central to the work. The generated concepts were starting points, not final solutions. I refined them against the product requirements, usability considerations, and engineering feedback.

This approach reduced the time spent creating initial drafts and allowed more attention to be directed toward evaluating and improving the experience.

The dashboard progressed from initial exploration to engineering handoff in approximately two weeks.

03. High-Fidelity Design & Engineering Collaboration

After establishing the core experience, I moved into high-fidelity design in Figma, translating the validated design direction into consistent interfaces and interaction patterns.

My focus was on creating an experience that felt cohesive across different financial tasks, while ensuring that individual workflows remained simple and understandable.

I worked closely with engineers throughout implementation to clarify interaction details, address technical constraints, and maintain design consistency as the product took shape.

Rather than treating handoff as the end of the design process, I approached it as an extension of the collaboration, allowing decisions to be refined as implementation progressed.

The underlying principle remained consistent: make complex financial operations feel straightforward without removing the information and control businesses need.

Outcome & Reflection

The work established a unified design direction for Vector's financial dashboard, bringing account visibility, currency management, and cross-border payment workflows into a more cohesive product experience.

By combining structured problem framing, AI-assisted exploration, and early engineering collaboration, I moved the dashboard from initial concepts to engineering handoff in approximately two weeks.

More importantly, the project reinforced an approach I continue to apply to complex product environments:

Good design doesn't simply make complex systems look simpler. It makes that complexity easier for users to understand, navigate, and act on.