Northwestern Mutual Compensation Dashboard

Field leaders couldn't understand their own compensation. Data was scattered across multiple legacy reports and platforms, forcing them to ask coaches for hand-holding instead of strategically managing their team's production.

1. 01Ran in-depth interviews with Managing Directors and District Directors to map the mental model of how comp actually flows.
2. 02Designed a single consolidated view with drill-down clarity — from the at-a-glance number to the underlying production data.
3. 03Created a flexible component system that handles multiple comp structures without forking the UI.

I led this project end-to-end after we lost the lead designer at kickoff, mentoring a junior designer alongside me. We opened with workshops with our internal users — primarily Managing Directors — and partnered closely with research across multiple rounds, including SUS benchmarking. I sat in on interviews and contributed to synthesis. From there I drove the work from wireframes through mid- and high-fidelity, presenting at every stage to stakeholders and the internal design team. I worked hand-in-hand with engineering throughout — reviewing feedback during design, then running design QA on the built code — and kept handoff-ready files moving in parallel.