Project Overview
HubSync users — accountants and tax professionals managing dozens of client engagements at once — had no single view of where things stood. Checking engagement letter signatures, tax return progress, document activity, and client notifications meant navigating into separate workspaces and tools one at a time, with no way to see status at a glance across their full client book.
HubSync Dashboard
A customizable, data-driven home screen for HubSync’s financial SaaS platform, designed under an urgent startup timeline to give accounting teams a single view of engagement, tax, and document status instead of checking separate tools one by one.
MY ROLE
Role: Lead Product Designer
Company: HubSync
Platform: Financial SaaS Web Application
Tools: Figma, Jira, Miro, Sketch, In vision, Zeplin, WCAG 2.1 AA
SUMMARY
The HubSync Dashboard is a configurable home screen that gives accounting teams one view of engagement, tax return, and document status across every client. Each user decides which tiles they see and where they sit.
Problem
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Users had to open multiple separate workspaces to check engagement letter, tax return, and document status for each client.
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There was no single “home” view summarizing where things stood across a user’s full client book.
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Status data that existed in the system (signed/sent/not-started counts, e-file progress, questionnaire completion) wasn’t surfaced anywhere — users had to infer it manually.
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Recent activity (notifications, file uploads) was easy to miss without a centralized feed.
Solution
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A configurable, drag-and-drop dashboard built from independent tiles rather than a fixed layout.
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Chart type matched to the data’s shape: horizontal bar charts for status counts (Engagement Letter Status: Signed/Sent/Not Started), and pie/donut charts for proportional breakdowns (Tax Return Progress, 8879 Current Status, Organizer Questionnaire Status).
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A per-tile workspace filter (“All workspaces”) so users could scope any individual tile without losing their overall layout.
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Activity tiles (My Notifications, Recent Files) alongside analytics tiles, combining status with the underlying actions behind that status.
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“Add Tile” and “Reset to Default” controls so the dashboard could grow and still be easy to recover to a known-good state.
HubSync Dashboard Dynamically brings all your work to your fingertips in one fully customized view.
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One place for everything you need
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Quick links to your applications
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Status of Engagements
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Client Interaction & Notifications
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Fully customizable for your firm’s needs
How I Approached This Project
An urgent timeline meant no room for a long research phase — so I compressed the process instead of skipping it. Here’s how a fixed-layout first draft became the customizable dashboard that shipped:
Pattern Scan
HubSync was a startup, and this feature had an urgent turnaround — there wasn’t time for a formal competitive audit. Instead, I did a quick pattern scan of tools I already used day-to-day — Airtable, ClickUp, and Monday.com — to validate the direction before designing: a modular, widget-based dashboard rather than one fixed view, with chart type matched to the data. Here’s what that scan confirmed:
Stakeholder Feedback
With no time for formal usability testing, I walked our PM and internal stakeholders through the first dashboard prototype and used Rose / Bud / Thorn — a lightweight way to sort open-ended reactions into what was working, what wasn’t, and what people wished for — to make sense of their feedback without losing the nuance in a single pass/fail call. I ran two rounds of prototype walkthroughs with our PM and stakeholders. Round 1 reviewed the first, fixed-layout design; round 2 is where the feedback shifted from “what’s on the dashboard” to “who controls it.”
From Feedback to a Customizable Dashboard
The Thorn and Bud feedback kept pointing at the same problem from two angles: a single fixed set of tiles didn’t fit every role. In round 2 of prototype testing, I worked with stakeholders to sort and prioritize candidate data tiles by category, which made it clear a tax preparer and a client-services lead needed different views. That’s what led me to redesign the dashboard around a fully customizable Add / Remove / Rearrange system instead of one layout for everyone.
Final Design
The final dashboard keeps the tile structure from the prototype, with the controls users asked for: filter any tile, add or remove tiles, and expand a tile for detail. The dashboard shipped as the home screen of the HubSync platform. Accounting teams could see engagement and tax return status across clients in one place instead of opening each workspace, and each user could shape the view to their role. The customization controls came directly from stakeholder feedback.
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Each tile has its own workspace filter, so users can narrow one view without changing the rest of the layout.
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The full dashboard: status charts, recent files, and notifications in one configurable grid.
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The Add Tile library, organized by category (Analytics, Database, Files, Activity, Workspace) so users can find a tile quickly.
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Any tile expands to a larger view when users need more detail.
What I’m Proud Of
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Shipped a data-dense, multi-chart-type dashboard on an urgent startup timeline, without a formal research phase — by leaning on stakeholder expertise, a quick pattern scan, and fast prototype iteration instead of skipping process altogether.
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Caught — through two rounds of stakeholder feedback, not assumption — that a single fixed layout couldn’t serve every role, and pivoted the design to a fully customizable Add / Remove / Rearrange system before launch rather than after user complaints.
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Built the tile system around clear categories (Analytics, Database, Files, Activity, Workspace) so it could grow with the product — new tiles slot into an existing structure instead of requiring a redesign each time.