Unified Member Dashboard

Problem Statement

Multiple products, zero unified view: Before this initiative, there was no single home page reflecting a member's full activity. Every product was self-contained. Both members and admins lost time to navigation that could have been spent on actual work.

Research & Discovery

This project served two fundamentally different audiences. I ran research with both groups from the start rather than treating admin needs as secondary.

Key research insights

How might we give members a personalised, at-a-glance view of their full association life — and give admins the engagement signals they need — without requiring either group to navigate between four products?

Define

Mapping 8 data domains to widgets: Before wireframing I ran a widget taxonomy exercise — mapping each domain to its source product, data availability (real-time vs. cached), and the single most critical information a member needs at a glance. This seeded early API feasibility conversations with engineering.

Design Process

Three rounds of wireframes and testing: The central challenge was information density — 8 widgets competing for a single screen. Each round tested a progressively more opinionated hierarchy until the right priority order emerged.

v1: Dense equal grid

What was tested: All 8 widgets in equal-sized cards — a uniform grid with no visual hierarchy. Every widget competed equally for attention.

Feedback: Information overload. Members felt overwhelmed and couldn't identify what needed attention. Admins said it felt like a reporting tool, not an action surface.

v2: Hero + secondary

What was tested: Membership Status as a large hero card at the top. Remaining widgets in a 2-column grid below. Alerts moved to a right-hand sidebar.

Feedback: Much cleaner. But admins needed more data density, and members wanted "next actions" surfaced more prominently — not buried inside widget cards.

v3: Final — validated

What was tested: Admin-configured widget order. "Action Items" strip pinned at the very top. Membership Status and Alerts always pinned. Remaining 6 widgets in a responsive 2-column grid below.

Feedback: Members immediately understood what needed attention. Admins praised the health summary layout. Both groups completed tasks significantly faster in testing.

Final Design

The final member view opens with a personalised greeting with membership status, a pinned Action Items strip surfacing urgent tasks, a hero Membership details stripe, and multiple domain widgets in an admin-configured grid layout.

How admins configure it

Overall page level

Admins control widget visibility and display order through a configuration drawer/Panel. The configuration is only accessible to the admins ensuring critical information survives any configuration.

Individual widget level

Each widget can be separately configured as well. Example - Membership widget, where each component of the Membership widget can be configured to exactly present certain aspects of the total information fetched from the central data-hub.

Design decisions and rationale

Outcomes and Impact

Results after launch

Qualitative outcomes

• Members described feeling "more in control" of their association life in post-launch interviews.

• Action strip drove timely membership renewals — visible reminders measurably reduced lapsed memberships.

• Admins reported the health overview eliminated their weekly manual cross-product report entirely.

• Dashboard positioned as a flagship differentiator in product sales demos and onboarding presentations.

• Engineering noted the widget API pattern accelerated future widget development significantly.

What I'd carry forward