Project Overview

DataSync was a project completed with a team of 4: Milo Soriano, Marisol Park, and Cher Wang at New York University. We were selected to compete in Product Management Club's Fall 2024 Case Competition. We received the prompt a day before the pitch and had 24 hours to develop a solution and present it to judges at PitchBook Data's New York office.

The Prompt

💡 Many professionals rely on data platforms that provide financial information to quickly and accurately access reliable information. However, current tools for uploading and matching data can be time-consuming and / or inaccurate. These challenges often tend to interrupt workflow and lead to frustration.

As a product team at a financial data platform, your mission is to create a feature(or features) that can streamline the process of bulk data entry, and improves the accuracy of entity matching. This tool should save users time and ensure they have quick access to high quality data

What we did

During the 24-hour period, we gathered user interviews from an investment banker at Bank of America, a technical services engineer at Epic, and a bank teller at JP Morgan. We conducted market research, developed a mid-fidelity prototype, and pitched our solution.

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Challenges and how we resolved them

• Challenge 1. Time constraints:

  • With only 24 hours—minus sleep, commute time, and office preparation—we had just one night to develop this project.

• Solution: We tackled this by using the CIRCULAR method and distributing work efficiently. Team members focused on different areas: user interviews, market research, prototyping, project scope, and adaptability. (What is the circular method? Read here)

Challenge 2: The biggest challenge was developing a solution without financial expertise or background. Most of our team came from UX design, with one person from product management.

• Solution: We leveraged our connections and immediately conducted user interviews with an investment banker at Bank of America, a technical services engineer at Epic, and a bank teller at JP Morgan. We conducted quick market research too to understand the whole environemnt.

Challenge 3: Struggled to create a UI prototype. We faced difficulties designing a solution because we lacked knowledge about financial data formats and typical industry tools, which made it hard to envision the UI.

• Solution: We created a conceptual prototype based on our research insights and presented it despite our limited domain knowledge.

Reflection

Looking back, this project taught us valuable lessons about rapid problem-solving and the importance of leveraging diverse perspectives. Despite our initial concerns about lacking financial expertise, our backgrounds in UX design actually proved beneficial in creating a user-centered solution. The experience highlighted how cross-functional collaboration and quick adaptation can lead to innovative solutions, even under significant time constraints.