Mobile Investment Experience

SEP 2023 - JUN 2024 | Product Designer

My role

  • Designed the core UX for Fixed Income, Mutual Funds, and Equities investment functionalities

  • Advocated a research-focused UX process

  • Delivered hi-fi specs  for implementation

  • Established & evolved the mobile investment design system

Background & problem

DriveWealth provides comprehensive financial investment and transaction APIs to its business clients (who serve end-users through its apps or platforms). As DriveWealth widens product offerings and continues improving existing features, our existing and new clients are often faced with either high-level business updates or extremely detailed technical documents. Often this has led our clients to scratch their heads because it’s hard for them to visualize how this could work for their end users in an intuitive way with the right granularity. This has been identified as the top barrier for client adoption and onboarding, especially for international clients entering US financial markets. 

Project goal

To address this challenge,  we aim to create a set of user-friendly mobile investment experiences for the following goals:

  • Showcase detailed API capabilities from an end-user perspective: The clients gain a clear understanding of the API's functionalities through the lens of its end users via intuitive mobile interfaces.

  • Provide UX baseline and best practices: We showcase how the API services are designed to be seamlessly integrated into real consumer apps and offer the best UX practices, which would greatly speed up their design and development process.

  • Elevate API designs: By translating APIs into real user flows, the UX team can provide valuable feedback to the engineering team to further improve API designs for optimal UX for our clients.

Challenges

This project pushed the boundaries of user experience by translating the complexities of APIs into a simple and intuitive mobile interface. There are three key challenges:

  • Domain knowledge heavy: The API offerings cover a wide range of types of financial investment, each with highly specific properties, processes, requirements, regulations, and user needs.

  • Balancing simplicity and comprehensiveness: The interface needed to showcase the full spectrum of use cases our powerful API supports, while still keeping the flow intuitive and end-user-friendly.

  • Lack of direct user research and feedback: Since the design was for prospective end users through the lens of our business clients, direct user research and feedback weren't readily available.

How I tackled these

  • Recognizing this as a new domain, I quickly ramped up in 2 weeks, utilizing multiple resources to familiarized myself with the intricate domain knowledge of new asset classes so that I come in with full context.

  • I conducted a thorough competitive analysis of existing mobile investment experiences and explored relevant industry trends.

  • I evaluated leading investment applications to understand key user journeys, pain points, and best practices.

  • Recognizing the B2B nature of the project, I actively sought out user insights beyond direct end-user feedback. This included:

    • Product team collaboration: I worked closely with the product team to understand the target investment company user and their key use cases.

    • Expert panel: I leveraged the experience of our PM teams for valuable technical insights specific to the new asset classes.

    • User research with the internal audience: I conducted low-cost and quick user research (e.g. cognitive walkthrough, contextual inquiry, heuristic evaluation) with colleagues during design iterations  gaining valuable and real-time feedback

  • I collaborated closely with the PM and engineering teams, to ensure all features were technically feasible and aligned with their vision. This collaboration ensured a final product that met both user needs and technical capabilities.

Persona

  • Pain points:

    • Navigating platform options: Finding a user-friendly and beginner-friendly trading platform that caters to their needs can be a hurdle.

    • Balancing cost and convenience: They are cost-conscious and seek investment opportunities with low fees and service charges.

    • Demystifying the market: Understanding the complexities of US asset markets, particularly for offshore investors, can be a significant barrier to entry.

    • Craving guidance and support: They desire educational resources and ongoing support to navigate their investment journey with confidence.

  • Pain points:

    • Geographic Restrictions: Offshore regulations may limit access to certain US-based investment products and opportunities.

    • Limited analytical resources: Existing investment platforms might not provide the advanced analysis tools catered to the specific needs of offshore investors managing international assets.

  • Pain points:

    • Limited exposure to new asset classes: They may lack in-depth knowledge about fixed-income investments, particularly within the US market.

    • Friction with existing platforms: They might be frustrated with the outdated user experiences of traditional brokerage platforms.

    • Complexity concerns: The perceived complexity of fixed-income investing could deter them from exploring these opportunities.

    • Inaccessible minimums: High minimum investment requirements may be a barrier to entry.

Critical user flows

Equipped with domain knowledge from my research, I crafted a complete UX package, consisting of 5 critical user flows that cover the entire lifecycle of the investment experience.

The package translates complex technical and financial concepts (API capabilities) into intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, addressing key stages:

Design

  • Onboarding

    Meet legal and regulatory requirements while keeping friction low

  • Asset discovery

    Intuitive and powerful search guides investor to discover and locate asset with minimal effort

  • Order placement - buy & Sell

    Clear process and information hierarchy 

    Put users in control every step

    Order placement - buy & Sell

  • Post-trading management

    Notification to keep user up-to-date

    Asset Management options

Impact

The design solved a critical piece of the puzzle in securing a new strategic investment area for the company.

Client Engagement & API Showcase

The intuitive mobile interface served as a powerful demonstration of DWealth's robust Asset Trading API capabilities, effectively engaging potential clients.

Enhanced User Experience (UX) & Brand Consistency

Demonstrated robust Asset Trading API capabilities intuitively with the right granularity

  • Highly praised by the FI PM and leadership and kicked off the mobile investment UX bootstrap project

Learnings

  • The rapid ramp-up in a new domain:
    Resilience and flexibility for an unconventional design project

  • Foster a collaborative relationship with cross-functional partners: Always actively learning, collaborating, and iterating.