Financial trade application modernization

Global financial services firm

Working with the business and system analyst to identify the true business needs on how the application will be organized and function. Conducted multiple design workshops to identify the core set of user personas, user needs and user scenarios for core actions and touchpoints. Created wireframe prototypes to define the navigation and content layout and conducted usability testing to ensure it was consistent with the overall user needs. Provided guidance and direction for the overall design system and reusable components to be implemented across multiple platforms. As a result, this program provided the executive leadership team with a clear vision for the future state customer experience and an executable plan for them to make progress in an incremental way while laying the foundation for a new way of thinking about one integrated organization consolidating customer user interfaces at the task/activity level across their business units, products and services.

User Research and Personas

To ensure that we were designing the right product I lead the research team in conducting user interviews that help me create the initial set of user personas. These personas were extremely helpful in understanding the current challenges the users face today and what other systems they use on a daily basis.

User Flows

In the current system we identified many use cases in which there were duplicative and uneccesary actions that the end users were doing to perform a simple task. To resolve and simplify those uses cases I created a variety of user flow diagrams that documented the current state flows and below them a future state flow that would reduce time spent on tasks and provide a more intuitive user experience.

Conceptual Design & Approach

I started off designing the system with paper sketches to identify the core shell of what the product was going to support. I used the following user centered design approach to take the designs from initial ideas, concepts and into final detailed designs. This was a very complicated financial system so there were many iterations of these concepts to prove and test out these complex user interactions.

Wireframes

I created an initial set of wireframes based on the concepts chosen. These needed to be very detail oriented to ensure that the data was accuratly represented within the system. A big focus was on the overall lifecycle view of the data records and the landing page dashboard which would provide the user key insights into the overall outlook of the data and key actions to take to resolve any issues.

Impact:

  • Led ux strategy for trading platform used by 5,000+ financial advisors resulting in streamlined user flows and significantly enhanced usability.

  • Conducted user research identifying critical pain points in existing system

  • Created wireframe prototypes defining navigation and content layout

  • Implemented modular design system enabling faster deployment of new features

  • Provided the executive leadership with clear vision for customer experience and executable implementation plan

Skills:

  • User Research

  • Personas

  • Information Architecture

  • UI/UX Interaction Design

  • Design System

Project Details:

  • Duration: 4 Months

  • Team Size: 8 Full time roles

    • Project Manager

    • Lead Designer/Researcher (My Role)

    • Junior Designer

    • Researcher

    • 4 Developers

Detailed Designs & User Testing

I took those approved wireframes and applied the final design colors, fonts and spacing so that they could be shared with the development team to implement. We went through multiple rounds of design iterations and user testing.