New trading capabilities
Envisioning a new experience to catch up to our competitors
Title
Industry
Date
Team size
Role
Skills
Tools
% ▲
Operating income
increase for the firm
% ▲
New accounts
clearing and custody
% ▲
Daily average trades
from previous quarter
Results
Kiplinger's Review ranked Fidelity #1 for Investment Choices, Advisory Services, Tools, and #1 overall for Top Online Brokerage.
– Fidelity Investments Q3 2021 Report
Situation
*Multi-leg option strategies are defined by the simultaneous trading of multiple option contracts, as opposed to individual, single-leg options traded one at a time. One can better understand pricing, profit/loss, and other key data in a single trade than multiple, separate trades.
► Which MLO strategies are most important to our users?
► How do we identify current pain points — and prevent new pain points — while designing this new capability?
► Should we improve the existing trading tool, or should we design a brand new tool?
Adding MLO functionality to our platform will streamline the advisor/rep order process, reduce errors, and create an additional revenue source.
– Fidelity analyst, 2018
Vision & Approach
What are our objectives?
► Bring the options trading capabilities of Wealthscape up to parity with competitors
► Ensure that the visual design meets Fidelity’s design system standards for institutional investors
► Provide the best possible experience for institutional investors
Our product development team endured a rocky transition from Waterfall to Agile partway through our roadmap. I navigated successfully through this transition through open communication and realignment of team agreements and remaining as lean as possible throughout my design process to meet the urgent needs of our development team.
01
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I leveraged competitive analysis and user research to identify pain points and preferences. These insights allowed me to build a concept model and process flow diagram, which I included in a detailed experience brief.
02
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I drafted wireframes and basic interactions for one specific MLO strategy. These designs enabled our team to determine our scope: a full redesign of the trading tool.
03
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After collaborating on requirements and development stories, I iterated on wireframes and higher-fidelity designs, which enabled me to build interactive prototypes to better convey visual design and IxD.
04
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I wrote a detailed user research brief and designed two prototype variants to determine the better approach. I then collaborated with a UX researcher to conduct a moderated usability study (A/B test).
05
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As I approached the end of the design cycle, I worked even more closely with our front-end developers to test the experience and ensure quality control.
Design: Wealthscape Multi-leg Options
Joining the Wealthscape product development team meant needing to learn up on options trading and write up an experience brief to capture my design goals, user personas, user problem statement, expected outcomes, and other pertinent information that would collectively serve as my "north star".
Experience design brief sample
I designed this user interaction for creating a calendar spread, a unique option strategy requiring selection of two expiration dates.
I collaborated with our team product owner and analyst to build a concept model that outlines step-by-step user workflows for performing all of the necessary tasks associated with trading MLOs. This served as the foundation for IA and IxD as I began to explore ideas through sketches and wireframes.
Concept model sample
This is the latest implementation of a user interaction I designed for creating a calendar spread, a unique option strategy requiring selection of two expiration dates.
Utilizing Fidelity's design system and leveraging patterns and components from other Wealthscape tools, I produced numerous wireframes and high-fidelity designs in Sketch under the guidance of our team analyst.
My goal became to design a trading tool that contained all of the fundamental data and inputs necessary for our institutional users to quickly build and execute trades on behalf of their clients; I explored a variety of layouts and interactions for numerous features that we determined to be industry standard or were requested directly by Wealthscape users.
One of my early user flow diagrams for a specific MLO strategy (note: photo is blurred for confidentiality).
We ultimately landed on a series of designs that were accessible, readable, and easy to tab through using keyboard navigation.
I produced two interactive prototypes in Axure for the purpose of moderated usability and A/B testing. Our team partnered with a UX research group from a local university to conduct such a study with our prototypes. Ahead of the study, I collaborated with our analyst, team leader, and UX manager to build a user research brief that captured our goals and objectives, which then served as the basis of our moderated test guide.
Research brief and test guide samples
This is the latest implementation of a user interaction I designed for creating a calendar spread, a unique option strategy requiring selection of two expiration dates.
The final readout and analysis of the user study concluded that, overall, the new MLO design was a near-success. User feedback was mostly positive, and feedback on specific elements of both the UX and visual design were constructive and used to further improve the design ahead of final implementation to Wealthscape.
Screenshot of an interactive prototype of the new MLO trading tool, representing the final design, which I built in Axure RP.
Test & Learn
The final readout and analysis of the user study concluded that, overall, the new MLO design was nearly a full success.
User feedback was mostly positive, and feedback on specific elements of both the UX and visual design were constructive and used to further improve the design ahead of final implementation to Wealthscape.
(edited by me)
Selected projects that reflect my approach to design, teamwork, and product development.