Investment Fiduciary Services · Wells Fargo
Reimagining data density in the Asset Detail Table
Full visibility into 17 to 20 columns of investment data on tablet, without sacrificing a single data point, by challenging a "hard browser limitation" that turned out not to be one.
The constraint
When I took over the Investment Fiduciary Services (IFS) project at Wells Fargo, one of the most highly funded initiatives in the bank's history, I inherited a critical usability gap in the asset detail table. On tablet, relationship managers and clients could only see eight columns of data, despite needing access to seventeen to twenty. The existing rationale was that this was simply a browser limitation, that true responsiveness wasn't achievable at that breakpoint. I pushed back on that assumption.
The research
Leading both the IFS 1 and IFS 2 teams, I directed competitive research to identify how other platforms handled dense, high-stakes data on constrained screens. Part of that approach was digging into what competitors and other design teams were doing to solve large, complex tables without compromising the customer experience. After a fair amount of research on my own, I found detailed, well-documented examples on Shopify's Shared UX site and brought them to our stakeholders and front-end development lead.
The solution
Rather than building something new from scratch, we were able to reuse an existing component already in our design system: the paddle controls from our carousel pattern, adapted here to navigate table columns instead of carousel slides. We landed on a solution that kept a core set of columns visible at all times, while allowing users to navigate additional columns using those paddle controls paired with dot indicators, giving them a clear sense of how many columns remained and how many they'd already passed.
Confidentiality Notice: Visuals have been recreated using AI to protect confidential information while accurately representing my design work.
| Account | Asset Class | Market Value | Cost Basis | Unrealized G/L | YTD Return | Yield | Alloc % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC Account | Equities | $643,787 | $580,200 | +$63,587 | +8.4% | 1.8% | 56.7% |
| EFG Sub Account | Fixed Income | $201,787 | $198,400 | +$3,387 | +1.2% | 4.1% | 17.7% |
Only 8 of 17–20 columns fit. The rest simply don't exist for the user, no scroll cue, no way in.
After| Account | Asset Class | Market Value | Cost Basis | Unrealized G/L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC Account | Equities | $643,787 | $580,200 | +$63,587 |
| EFG Sub Account | Fixed Income | $201,787 | $198,400 | +$3,387 |
Account column stays pinned. The dot indicator shows exactly where you are: gold for columns already passed, navy for the current column, and empty dots for what's still hidden to the right, so the paddle controls always tell you both how far you've come and how much further there is to go.
Outcome
Full visibility into investment portfolios without sacrificing a single data point, even on smaller screens. Every column retained its totals row, so nothing about the integrity of the data was lost in the process, proving that "the browser won't allow it" was a design assumption worth challenging, not a hard limit.