Trader Workflow Optimization
This project represents real work that is shielded by NDAs. Any identifiable information has been removed, but problems, methodologies, and insights have remain unchanged.
Responsibilities:
Research Planning
Stakeholder Management
User Interviews
Analysis and Synthesis
Role:
UX Research Lead
Timeline
10 weeks
Overview:
Traders work in an incredibly fast-paced environment, where they often have just minutes to receive, price, and execute a trade. Having an optimized workflow is crucial to ensuring that trades are priced accurately and executed efficiently to maintain client satisfaction and earnings. However, the current workflow requires navigation across various applications at every step, including many applications that have slow loading times and inflexible analytics options. We set out to conduct research across this suite of applications to understand where to narrow in with more focused research, and to understand our users.
Problem:
Research Goals:
Traders have to navigate across many different applications with poor functionality across the trading workflow. Because trades usually happen in a matter of minutes, optimizing this workflow will increase efficiency and the number of trades being executed.
Because we were tasked with such a large scope across various applications, we worked with key stakeholders to narrow this project down to 4 key research goals that aligned with business objectives:
Identify and document current trade workflow
Identify which applications and factors impacted decision-making around pricing and hedging (key aspects of the trade workflow)
Develop a high level approach to move forward with, by identifying key pain points, bottlenecks, and opportunities
01 Research Planning
After identifying research goals with stakeholders, we set out to create a research plan that aligned with those goals and created tangible business value
Methodology:
Participants:
Timeline:
Deliverables:
Qualitative User Interviews
15 traders across London, NYC, and Hong Kong, and 2 trading desks
8-10 weeks
Current trade workflow
Standard research report
02 Stakeholder Management
Because this project was very high visibility, we did encounter some scope creep from the product team who was looking for this project to be as comprehensive as possible
A problem we encountered throughout this project was a request to increase the number of users. The product team knew many traders, and wanted to include as many perspectives as possible to get the best data. While well-intentioned, we had agreed to limit the project to 15. What we decided on was:
Stakeholders were going to join all of our sessions as observers (which had been offered from the start) in order to have eyes on the progress of the interviews
We added 2 extra traders to speak to who stakeholders felt were key voices in this project
We had debriefs with stakeholders twice throughout the course of interviews to identify emerging themes, get feedback, and shape our approach
03 Results
Research Goal #1: Identify existing trade workflow
*Colors represent different applications
The identification of the existing workflow revealed a mess of various applications, going back and forth between applications that each, while providing value, are incredibly siloed, and terrible loading times.
Research Goal #2: Identify applications and factors that impact decision-making in hedging and pricing, and opportunities for growth
Traders want time of trade analytics in one accessible and easily customizable format
Traders indicated that there was no option to get easy, convenient analytics while pricing and hedging, but that they had to navigate through multiple applications for various analytic tools. Having most analytics in one place would be the most helpful
There was also a need for analytics to be customizable - each trader has their own analytics needs that are dependent on desk, region and preference, so a one-size-fits-all tool wouldn’t work
Traders want more client and event information easily available to them
Understanding which clients were interested in which companies and what they were invested in would be helpful information when executing trades
Having event information pushed to traders would be helpful to know what is happening with companies and sectors they’re interested in
Traders want, at the very least, for applications to be more integrated with each other
Recognizing that one centralized trading platform might take years to achieve, traders were open to a quicker solution: having applications integrated with each other, so that a trade could go through various applications without any manual entry
Particularly, traders wanted price requests to automatically show up in the pricing tool
Research Goal #3: Develop a high level approach to move forward with, based on identified pain points, opportunities, and bottlenecks
We decided to move forward with 3 different tracks of work, with 2 of our UX Designers working on high level concepts for an analytics tool and I would continue to do more discovery around a couple key applications
Analytics Tool
Based on feedback, a UX Designer on our team set out to design high level concepts on how to expand one of the more functional analytics tools available
Client Tool
Based on feedback, a UX Designer on our team set out to design high level concepts on how to update one of the existing client tools to include push notifications
Continuing Research
I set out to do more research focusing on a couple key applications we identified to get more information on users, tactical fixes, and how to integrate them together with the analytics tool and the client tool
04 Research Impact
Strategic Impact:
Stakeholder Impact:
Product Impact:
We were able to develop a more cohesive roadmap across key tools in the trading workflow
Stakeholders, while initially skeptical of discovery research, saw value in more generative research. The result was the opportunity to continue exploration.
We were able to provide business value in validating their hypotheses, and moving forward with design in some areas with the knowledge we acquired
We developed insights on users and their ideal use of the products to prioritize steps on the product roadmap
We gained an in-depth understanding of user needs and pain points, and how to approach next steps in the design process
04 Reflection
This project was very high visibility, and required a lot of careful planning to ensure that we were delivering business value while maintaining a user-centered approach. Some key learnings I had were:
In a post-covid world, going in person to meet users can be invaluable
I really advocated to go to the trading floor to speak with users, because I felt like seeing their environment and their computer setups would be integral to understanding their workflows. I was not disappointed at all, even though this took more planning than I was expecting to be able to stream interviews to stakeholders. But, just being on the trading floor helped me learn so much about how traders operate and I even got off-the-cuff comments from salespeople on the floor that really rounded out my understanding
Discovery research at its core might not lead to solutions, but rather more questions
A key part of this project was convincing stakeholders that not having concrete tangible fixes to take away from the research was ok! Setting their expectations accurately and realigning continuously helped us deliver on something much more valuable: a strong direction that could create a final end-stage product, rather than bandage fixes.