Aces
Designing an intuitive user experience for a stock trading and investing platform
In my college's Interaction Design course, we were given the assignment of developing an app that solved a problem we encountered in our lives. As a beginner in investing, I had recently adopted Fidelity as my first brokerage, and really disliked their inaccessible and visually unappealing UX. For my project, I took inspiration from the concept of more aesthetic and intuitive brokerage apps, like Robinhood, and designed my own minimalist asset management app.
Research
I wanted to identify which user pain points were most prominent when interacting with their mobile brokerage apps. I designed and distributed a survey that asked participants about their experiences with their current apps, analyzed the data, and subsequently synthesized pain points based on their qualitative responses.
Survey Questions 📝
How satisfied are you with the overall user experience of your current mobile brokerage/investing app? Please provide specific reasons for your rating, highlighting features or aspects that contribute to your satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Identify the top three features or functionalities that you consider essential for an outstanding user experience in a mobile brokerage/investing app. How do these features contribute to your overall satisfaction and engagement with the platform?
Assess the ease of navigating through your current app. Are there specific areas or functions that you find challenging to locate or understand? How could the navigation be improved to enhance your experience?
How easily can you access and comprehend critical information, such as account balance, investment performance, and transaction history, on your current app? Are there specific improvements or changes you would suggest to make this information more accessible and transparent?
Evaluate the clarity of communication within the app, including notifications, alerts, and messages. Do you find the communication straightforward, or are there instances where you felt confused or uncertain? What recommendations do you have for enhancing communication clarity?
Understanding the data through visualization and statistical analysis
I collected my survey data through Qualtrics, distributing it to my friends, classmates, family, and others within my close network. The responses were cleaned and processed in SPSS, where I was able to generate this wordcloud and bar chart. These helped me to understand which features to target and test in my design process.
Design Process
I wanted to provide users with an accessible and intuitive way to invest. In my design, I wanted to focus on bringing simplicity and minimalism to the personal finance, keeping in theme with accessibility.
I began by designing a very basic flowchart for the sequences that users would need to follow in order to perform basic functions on the app, such as sign up for an account or access information about certain assets.
To develop my wireframes, I laid out the key functionalities that a brokerage platform must have: account management, real-time market data, trading tools, alerts/notifications, and portfolio breakdowns.
I began putting my wireframes together alongside my branding and design strategy. I planned to establish fluency between the app’s interaction styles, graphics, and final marketing, so I thought it was best to flesh all of those details out early on in the design process.
Accessibility ✅
Intuitive Design
When putting together my wireframes, I made sure to consider how button sizes, interactions, and element placements played into an intuitive and accessible mobile experience.
Final Design
Color Theory
I developed a very basic color palette for the style guide that took inspiration from primary colors. This decision was driven by the objective to keep the UX design minimal in visual complexity, while also delivering accessibility through high contrasting colors.
Typefaces
Similar to the strategy of the color palette, the typefaces included in this design’s style guide were chosen because of their simplicity and legibility. Both of these factors made the fonts strong candidates for accessible design.