Financial Software Case Study - American Funds Retirement Platform Redesign (2026)
An official design pass in 2026 of the American Funds Retirement Plan Account Manager. Shown here are three of the platform’s fundamental screens:
01
Core Plan Information
The first screen a coordinator opens on a new install, and the one they return to most. Fourteen fields wearing a header slab they do not need.
Current version in production:
Four unlabelled icon buttons
A teal circle, an envelope, a star and a dropdown called "View". Nothing states what any of them do, and the teal fill — the only saturated colour on the page — makes the least-used control the loudest object on it.
Three navigation systems at once
A global icon rail on the far left, a two-level accordion inside the panel, and a second icon rail pinned to the right edge. None of the three answers where you are in the install or what remains — the accordion's own "Processes" item is greyed out with no explanation.
A contact slab that cannot be acted on
Four contact groups own the top fifth of the viewport. Two read "None assigned" — a real gap in the install — but nothing here can assign anyone, and the phone number and email are plain text you cannot click. The space is spent stating a problem it refuses to solve.
Read-only values dressed as inputs
Plan ID, Plan Assets and Participant Count carry the same underline as every editable field, separated only by a dotted rule and slightly lighter grey. Fourteen fields hold three different permissions and share one visual treatment, so the only way to learn what you can edit is to try.
The primary action looks disabled
NEXT is grey on grey beside a CANCEL of equal weight, floating in the middle of the right column rather than at the end of the form. Nothing says what NEXT leads to, and there is no Save at all — no indication anywhere that your last edit persisted.
More form below the submit
"Show additional fields" opens further inputs underneath the button that leaves the page, so the disclosure and the action it invalidates are stacked in the wrong order. The two columns also fall out of rhythm — the right column has an unexplained gap where CB&T as Trustee sits on the left.
2026 Redesign concept:
Three permissions, three treatments
Editable fields are bordered boxes. Values the system owns — Plan ID, assets, participant count — are set in condensed type with no box at all, because a box promises editing. Fields the running automation has locked take a dashed border and say who owns them. Answers required vs. read-only unclear and part of form density: four of the fourteen stop competing for attention.
Fourteen fields became three named groups
Identity, Classification & service, From the record — each with a one-line note on what it drives. The two read-only figures moved out of the form into a three-up strip, so the form itself is now nine editable fields in two labelled groups. Additional fields sit below the last group and above the action bar, in the order you would use them.
Contacts became a rail with verbs
The slab moved to a right rail sized for reference rather than the top fifth of the viewport. "None assigned" became a button that assigns; the phone and email became Call, Email and Copy. Dashed frames mark the two gaps as unfinished work rather than settled fact, and the freed vertical space carries recent activity instead.
The screen knows where it is and whether it saved
A five-step rail carries the install with per-step completion, and the sidebar collapsed from two levels to one that counts fields. The action bar names its destination, holds the only solid button on the screen, and carries both the save state and the count of what is missing — with the one failing field called out in words at the field.
Onboarding document review
A document on the left, the same plan form on the right. The entire purpose of the screen is moving values from one side to the other, and nothing on it connects the two.
02
Current version in production:
Fields cite the clause they came from
Every field under review carries its source — "Article 2.2 · p.3" — and selecting it highlights that clause in the document, shown here on the tax ID. The link between the two panes was the screen's whole reason to exist and was the one thing it did not have; now it is the primary interaction.
Three fields, not fourteen
Values that match the document are confirmed and collapsed to a tag list, so the cramped pane now holds only the work. The two mismatches show RPAM value beside document value with the decision as a button; the low-confidence extraction says why it is uncertain instead of presenting a guess as fact.
One toolbar, four verbs, a movable seam
Sixteen icons and two menu bars became page navigation, zoom, annotate and find, which returns most of a toolbar's height to the document. Page thumbnails badge which pages hold fields under review, and the divider is draggable so either side can take the space when the work needs it.
History stopped covering the document
Source history became a footer that states the last change in a sentence and opens as a third column rather than a modal, so you never trade the page you are reading for the log. The header names the document, the plan and your position in the queue instead of three unlabelled IDs.
2026 Redesign concept:
Raw identifiers as a breadcrumb
CONBRYC, 888370, 268436968 — a user, a plan and a task, none of them labelled. The page title is "BETA - Assigned", which describes a queue state rather than the document in front of you or the plan it belongs to.
Two toolbars, sixteen icons, before the document
A File / Annotations / Options menu bar sits above a strip of sixteen unlabelled icon buttons. Roughly a tenth of an already-cramped pane is viewer chrome, for a task with about four verbs in it.
The page counter reads 0 / 0
The viewer is fully chromed and holding no document. The empty state is the entire interface with nothing in it, which reads as a failure rather than a beginning — and gives the reviewer no way to tell whether the file is missing or still loading.
History opens on top of the document
Source History fills the viewer pane, so checking who touched the plan means giving up the page you were reading. Its own rows then truncate to "Appian task: 2684369…" seven times over — a log where every entry looks identical.
A third icon rail on the seam
Seven more unlabelled icons stack between the panes, one a blue-outlined X. Nothing indicates which pane they act on, and the split itself is fixed — neither side can be given room when the work needs it.
The whole form, at half the width
Every field from screen 01 is reproduced in a 45%-wide column, contact slab included, so the reviewer scans fourteen fields to find the three the document actually changes. No field says where its value came from, and there is no record of which ones you have already checked.
Installation tasks
Fifty-eight tasks, four of them past due, each with its own dropdown. The screen presents an inventory when the coordinator needs a decision about what to do next.
03
Current version in production:
The bar makes "pending" the story
Fifty-three pending fills a wide blue band; four past due gets a chip a fifteenth of its size. The proportional bar is honest about volume and wrong about priority — the coordinator's actual question is answered by the smallest element on the row.
Fifty-eight dropdowns, no bulk action
Every row carries its own status select. Marking the five Introductions tasks in progress is five separate menus, and there is no way to select rows at all — so the most common operation on the screen is also the most expensive.
Nothing shows what is blocking what
"Existing TPA for Plan" and "New TPA for Plan" cannot start until the sponsor welcome call happens, but the list gives no hint of it. Dependencies live in the category ordering and in the coordinator's head, so the one task that would unblock three others looks like any other row.
Counters stranded at the far edge
"0 / 5" sits hundreds of pixels from the category name it counts, under a column header reading "Updated On/By". Progress and provenance share one slot, so neither reads cleanly.
Two avatars, no explanation; no owners
A purple C and a green S float over the right edge of the list, unattached to any row or column. Meanwhile no individual task shows an owner — the one thing a coordinator chasing a past-due item needs first.
A tooltip that repeats the row
Hovering "Contact Financial Professional" produces a tooltip reading "Contact Financial Professional" — a hover cost with nothing bought. Task names also appear in red or blue with no key; red seems to mean past due but reads as an error, so the row says "broken" and never says "overdue".Raw identifiers as a breadcrumb
CONBRYC, 888370, 268436968 — a user, a plan and a task, none of them labelled. The page title is "BETA - Assigned", which describes a queue state rather than the document in front of you or the plan it belongs to.
2026 Redesign concept:
The four past-due tasks lead
A band above the list states the number, how old the oldest is, who owns them, and offers a filter down to just those four. Volume moved into a legend, where it belongs — the coordinator's first question is answered by the largest element on the screen rather than the smallest.
Blocking made visible
Three tasks are waiting on one welcome call, and both ends say so: the blocked rows name what they are waiting for, and the call's row reads "clearing this unblocks 3 tasks". The single action that moves the install is now legible without knowing the process by heart.
Select rows, act once
Fifty-eight dropdowns became one checkbox column and an action bar that sets status, owner or target date for a whole selection. Every group offers "select all" for the common case, and each group's counter sits beside its name with a progress bar instead of stranded at the far edge.
Status has a shape, not just a colour
Empty square, half-filled, hatched, solid — not started, in progress, blocked, done, readable in greyscale. Every task shows an owner, dates carry "21 days late" in words as well as colour, and the red is spent only on lateness, so nothing else in the list can be mistaken for an error.