S&P Global Commodity InsightsProduct design

Commodities, connected.

Platts Connect: price assessments, research and analytics, and a Gen AI assistant that answers in context, all built on DaVinci, a design system I created.

Role: Director, Commodities Product Design
Timeline: 2020 – 2023 · Freelance
Markets: Oil, LNG, metals, agriculture
Platforms: Desktop, web and mobile

Platts Connect research and analytics workspace with key crude price assessments

Overview

The benchmark for commodity prices, in one workspace.

I designed cross-platform commodities pricing and analytics tools for S&P Global Commodity Insights, including price assessments, forward curves, watchlists, GIS mapping, research and alerts.

Problem

Prices, research, news and maps, all competing for attention.

Analysts and traders work across a huge amount of data. They needed it in a flexible workspace, and they needed new AI capabilities that helped without interrupting their flow.

Research & Discovery

Design for the analyst's day.

I focused on how financial analysts in oil, LNG, metals and agriculture move between prices, research and events, and where real-time decisions happen.

Platts widgets including price cards, basis charts, news cards, a GIS map and Chat AI — Widgets for a desktop free layout: price cards, basis charts, news, GIS mapping and Chat AI.

Design Approach

Flexible, intelligent and consistent.

Widgets and free layoutAnalysts build their own desktop from price, chart, news and map widgets.

Gen AI assistantA non-intrusive side panel that answers price questions and surfaces alerts with contextual actions.

DaVinci design systemDesign tokens, light and dark theming, and WCAG AA accessibility documented with a VPAT.

Rapid Prototyping

Model the AI conversation before building it.

I used Figma to design the assistant and Axure to model its conditional logic, from a market outlook to live prices and alert controls inside the chat, so the experience felt natural before engineering started.

Ask AI assistant panels answering crude market questions with live prices and alert controls — Ask AI: answers with live prices, alerts and contextual actions, right beside the analyst's work.

The data analysts need, and the answers they ask for.

Outcome

A connected commodities workspace.

One workspacePrices, research, news and maps in a layout each analyst controls.

AI in contextA Gen AI assistant designed to help without interrupting.

A design system that scalesDaVinci brought consistency, governance and accessibility across products.

Cross-platformDesktop, web and mobile experiences built from the same foundations.