Portfolio analysis bottleneck: Manual account-to-portfolio updates blocked users from accessing real-time portfolio status.

Portfolio mapping system for a crypto hedge fund

My Role

Lead Product Designer — research, system logic, end-to-end UI

Team

1 designer, 2 engineers, 1 PM

Timeline

4 months

Platform

Web

Outcomes

~1 hr/day

saved per operations manager

Zero

double-counted balances

One model

inherited by every page in the product

Historical P&L dashboard with portfolio filter, showing overlap warning between custody portfolios

Context

Starting Point: Integrated Data

Crypto assets scattered across wallets, exchanges, and protocols are linked via APIs to our platform. This case study picks up once the data is in: how does a trading desk make sense of it?

the problem

Manual Updates Block Live Portfolio Visibility

Users couldn't see live portfolio numbers because a complex, multi-layered structure required time-consuming manual updates, leading to delayed decisions and missed business opportunities in a fast-changing market.

Discovery

Dynamic, Multi-Parent Portfolio Structures

Portfolios represent real business entities. These structures can change over time as the business does.

The same account can legitimately belong to more than one entity. For different business scenarios.

Portfolios aren't organized in a single hierarchy. At each level, a portfolio directly contains one type — accounts, or other portfolios. A portfolio can also have two parents, each in its own separate chain.

Ideation

Portfolio as Filter, Controlled Overlap, and a Lean Table Solution

Portfolios as the primary data lens: All system analytics resolve through portfolios.

An account can be mapped to more than one portfolio, but never viewed through two at once.

Lean table solution: Represents the structure + makes it easy to create and edit existing portfolios.

Solution #1

Dynamic, Multi-Parent Structure

We used a table instead of a tree or diagram for two reasons:

—Flexibility: Supports portfolios with multiple parents across chains.

—Speed: A fast, simple solution to keep the project moving under a tight schedule.

Screen 1 — portfolio table with Mapped and Member Of columns, annotated to show the portfolio's composition determining its type, parent portfolios displayed as chips for shared children, and portfolio structures kept easily editable as the business evolves

Solution #2

Resolving Overlap at Mapping

Creating or editing portfolios opens a side drawer over the table, preserving context for frequent updates.

Mapping drawer with All / Mapped / Available / Already Assigned tabs, annotated to show the most common task determining the default tab, and accounts assigned elsewhere isolated so they cannot be mapped and viewed together

Solution #3

Error Prevention: Disabling the Overlap at the Point of Selection

Selecting a portfolio disables shared-account portfolios to prevent double-counting.

Outcomes

~1 hr/day

Saved per operations manager in manual reconciliation.

Next phase

Unlocked with the design partner, by proving the technical precision the partnership needed.

1 core model

The object-mapping system every page in the product now runs on, reusing the same hierarchy and filtering logic.