ActiveDisclosure

Overview / TLDR

ActiveDisclosure is a SaaS platform helping financial reporting teams file accurate, compliant, and timely reports to the SEC and ESMA. Our goal was to create a product that reduces filing stress, builds trust, and ensures clarity across cross-functional teams.

Goal: Offer reporting professionals peace of mind in the moments that matter most - through secure, collaborative, and intelligent disclosure tools. 

Problem

Users were struggling with version control, manual processes, and unclear filing timelines.

These inefficiencies created late-night stress, compliance risk, and breakdowns in team coordination.

DFIN aimed to improve customer retention, reduce support burden, and ensure regulatory compliance for its users by modernizing the filing experience.

History & Role

Story

ActiveDisclosure first launched in 2017 as a cloud-enabled disclosure tool. This introduced real-time collaboration and native Microsoft Office integration to modernize SEC reporting. It marked a major step forward in reducing version-control issues and improving cross-team visibility.

In January 2021, DFIN rebuilt the product from the ground up as a fully browser-based, cloud-native platform. The new version introduced seamless integrations, enterprise-grade security, intelligent workflows, and built-in support. This was designed to give users greater confidence and control during high-stakes filings.

Together, these milestones reflect a focused evolution toward delivering not just a product, but peace of mind for financial reporting teams.

My Contribution

I joined the project in January 2022, a year after ActiveDisclosure’s release - I have been responsible for AD’s designs for 3.5 years.

At that time, I collaborated across 6 engineering teams and 4 PMs with 1 other designer. Since then, we’ve expanded to 13 engineering teams, 6 PMs, and there are now 2 designers reporting to me as I lead AD’s design team - I also operated as the team’s iXBRL PM for 9 months.

3.5 years, a journey

When I joined, there were two types of editors: section-based slate editors and form-building editors.

Section-based editor: The first forms users filled out on our platform were 8-Ks, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks. This required users to upload documents and tables into our sections and use text to describe their documents. This section-based editor was able to be edited by multiple people at the same time, but only one person could edit a section at a time - they could also hide sections if they weren’t ready to be visible yet. This proved effective for small teams, but the review process became tedious because they printed their documents and they never knew how to find what page the content was on.

Form builder: There are plenty of forms that don’t require text or document uploads, so we built forms that can be easily built and optimized over time.

Now, 3.5 years later, we have replaced the section-based editor and added an option to create presentations within AD. Additionally, we built form builders that utilized AI to fill out your form for you.

Paginated editor: To help users track their work better, we decided to follow the pattern of Microsoft Word and Google Docs, where multiple users could edit a page at a time and you could always tell what page you were on. We retained the logic of sections within the paginated editor, where you still have locking and status permissions, but you can now see all sections within context of the total filing. Some filings are a few pages, some are well over 100 pages, so giving users a clear view of their document made them feel more at peace.

The first forms users filled out on our platform were 8-Ks, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks. This required users to upload documents and tables into our sections and use text to describe their documents. This section-based editor was able to be edited by multiple people at the same time, but only one person could edit a section at a time - they could also hide sections if they weren’t ready to be visible yet. This proved effective for small teams, but the review process became tedious because they printed their documents and they never knew how to find what page the content was on.

Presentations: Our most recent editor release was presentations - we wanted users to be able to utilize the same uploaded material to present documents to their shareholders and attach those presentations to their filings. This way, nothing is lost in translation and you can use one platform for all your needs.

Process

Design thinking is key for this project - we believe you must:

Design the right thing before you design the thing right.

We have a close relationship with our product owners, all engineering teams, and our users. We conduct user interviews with existing and potential customers, help product owners establish a vision for the product, and design iterations for every user story.

My goal is to design, iterate, and deliver as one team.

Solution

ActiveDisclosure’s offerings changed significantly through my time on this product - we had 15 major releases in 2024 and that number is set to go up in 2025. Of all the features I’ve designed, there are a few I’m particularly proud of.

Compare Grid

Within the iXBRL team, we utilize a grid to see all tags within a pre-defined area at once so you can compare your tags and ensure your document is tagged correctly.

User Goal: Users need to be able to see all of their tags in a document so they can ensure they’re submitting the right information to the SEC or other government agency.

Brief: Accountant users need to be able to see changes in tags based on the tag’s value, the tag’s attributes, and/or the tag’s attributes. They need to see when tags have been added, what tags have been deleted, and when existing tags have modifications; tags also need to be grouped by their preferred label role, date, and dimension (group).

Process: We began this process by interviewing users to determine their biggest pain points. Through discussion, we learned users were either reviewing tags one at a time within ActiveDisclosure or exporting all of their tags and comparing them through Excel documents - both of these were frustrating and time consuming. However, the biggest pain point was not seeing all of your tags at once. One user said they could open a separate version of the document in another browser and compare them there, he just wanted to see them all at once.

So, we began designing the grid. We started by determining the hierarchy of information to build this table based on how they review tags and what matters the most to them. Below are a few initial design concepts for v1:

Afterwards, we tested these with users and their feedback helped us tighten our design. We went through multiple rounds of feedback and iteration before we began building and constantly tested with users as we built the grid. And by a lot, I mean a lot.

However, when the dust settled, we ended with a grid that solved users’ needs and gave us something to build upon for compare.

Our next step was to define every possible change that could occur when comparing versions of a project. We created several hundred use cases of changes and eventually built out documentation to lay out how it should function for each scenario.

Compare also extends past the grid. We needed to track all the states for individual tag details, our facts navigator, and our tag index. Applying all the same style changes was complex, but we utilized Figma's variables and other tools to accomplish this quickly.

Findings: Now, users can view all tags in their document at one time and see what changes have happened since they last saved a version. They can approve changes in bulk and file their documents with confidence. Seeing the validation on users’ faces when we showed it to them was an incredible experience and I had such a great time working with them.

Design System

When I first joined the project, our design system was a dysfunctional component system. Every design that was shared with engineering had broken components, screenshots overlaying screens, and a very inconsistent feel to the system. Because of that, the platform itself was pretty dysfunctional from a design perspective and I aimed to improve it.

User Goal: Designers need to be able to track all components live on the platform, have a source of truth design folder, and have a shared design language that all designers champion.

Being the user for what we were designing was quite fun. I knew what I wanted to see in a design system and how I would work best. However, I wanted this to be transferable to any other designer onboarding onto the project. So, I spoke with many designers at my company on best practices and ideas. We landed on calling the system Valkyrie because our project has many Thor references within it (long story). Valkyrie is a fierce warrior and built trust with Thor, becoming a key ally to him. That is how we view our partnership with our engineering team and the rest of the designers loved it.

We built out our component system and have turned our design system into a replacement for storybook. The engineers have full access to it, we have built technical data into our designs, and everything matches the current state of our dev environment. Our hope would be that this would be easy to use and actually used by the engineering team.

While there is still work to do, like further documenting our design language, I’m so proud of how far the team has come.

Other features

Pagination, Certifications, Co-Authoring in the Editor, Tie-Outs, Section 16, and Section Hierarchy are all features I’m immensely proud to have been a part of for the last 3.5 years. Happy to share some information on them at request.

Results

42,000+ SEC Filings in 2024

14,000+ Client Sites

DFIN’s goal was to improve customer retention, reduce support burden, and ensure regulatory compliance for its users by modernizing the filing experience.

Over the last 3.5 years, we’ve focused on modernizing ActiveDisclosure to offer customers peace of mind and reduce their stress when they navigate high-stress filing peaks. Through this work, we helped DFIN’s net revenue increase by 17% year-over-year, increased customer retention, and helped customers through our end-to-end solution.

Demos

The client put together some demos for their sales team to start showcasing some of their newest features - I do not own any of these videos, but they do a good job showcasing some of the projects I was working on.

Conclusions and Future Recommendations

In the spirit of Agile, there is always more to do. There are plenty of opportunities to grow this product, especially utilizing AI. I won’t speak specifically to their plans or what we have cooking, but I can’t wait to see how users like it!

Personal Findings

I learned so much through my time on this product. I gained a lot of trust from the product owners through our time working together, which gave me a lot of freedom to try new ideas and experiment with existing solutions. From being overwhelmed by the sheer size of this product to leading the charge for design, I loved working on this so much. I am so proud of this product and I am very excited to see what’s next!