Case Study 3 • 2018 - 2019

Mobile trading

Role

Product design lead & design manager

Company

Goldman Sachs

Scope

Design strategy
Research
Interaction design
Visual design
Prototyping
Design library

Overview

Mobile app for institutional traders anywhere, anytime.

After API building from the order management project, we received many feedback that users would like to have the mobile capability. As Covid was happening in the background, our users were not constrained to their office desks any more. We see the growth opportunity to increase our mobile footprint across all regions globally and net new clients. The mobile trading had great commercial return projection as well. The initiative started with talking to users and analyzing competitors.

Problem

Lack of mobility

Institutional trading had been desktop focused given the complexity. Users became more mobile driven, and there was a gap in between user behavior transition and desktop-only offering.

research findings

Speed to task, performance, stability + security

The user research was conducted with 200+ targeted cross asset users, the findings were consistent--users need to have mobile trading capability that could empower their work and life quality.

• Time to trade (TTT) is everything
• No bells and whistles should clutter the path
• Locked down and useless in the wrong hands

Objective

Create a speedy, smart and intuitive trading mobile application

1. Ease of use

2. Workflow to match expectations of mobile usage

• Hierarchy and prioritization of complex data to fit mobile experience
• Precise, specific and smart decisions for sequencing and hierarchy of information, based on knowledge of execution space

3. Customizable and flexible

• Easy customization for users based on individual needs
• Design components are flexible to adapt to specific client types

Target audience

FX users with the needs to monitor market and orders

As the desktop platform is getting into cross-asset offerings, we want to carry this method into mobile trading as well. However, we decided to target with one business asset as our target user group while keeping cross-asset design patterns in mind. Once we build MVP, we can quickly scale the mobile platform into a cross-asset platform.

Pain points

Users are not able to get market views away from their desks

Basically, users are glued to their desks during working hours. Many occasions users are struggling with desktop-only access:

• traders have to wake up in the middle of the night to manage risks
• portfolio managers can’t view the market while visiting clients
• all users lose site to the market and order progression while commute

Competitive landsacpe

All but one of our direct competitors (Morgan Stanley) have a feature-rich mobile offering, with JPM and Citi considered-among the best, and all continue to invest in these platforms. Citi generates between $15MM and $20MM recurring revenue with their mobile offering. Some offer iOS and Android versions of their apps. All offer more functionality beyond trading, including but not limited to market color, market data, data querying, etc.

We also have vendors (Trading Screen, Flextrade, Spark) increasingly competing for wallet share in the mobile space.

Feature breadth

Execution Mental Model Mapping

Workflow

trading flow

Having the homepage as market, so users can access to the market right away.

Prototype

01

Market data

View-driven market data dashboard

02

Trade drawer to view more information

Trade drawer to view more information

03

Place an order and order management

User can bulk edit order

04

Features added to increase usability and effeciency

Notification

Custom keyboard

Order ticket iteration

Started from initial 2 simple order types, the iteration kept going and more order types were added.

Quick fill

User doesn’t need to wait for the order to fill. Instead, user can get it filled right away at current market price.

Order layout A/B tests

Prioritization

While I was iterating on the features, the fundamental direction was ready for engineers to start their backend build and front end preparation. Here was how I worked with PM and engineers to prioritize our development:

During and post development, I kept testing the features and the production environment with traders.

Impact

100+

FX institutional accounts onboarded

84% IOS, 16% Android

2 Million

New stream of revenue

Summary

The feedback is very positive, and mobile offering is expanding everyday. The plan is to add iPad and other tablets, so users can have designated portable monitors to view markets and trade.

“MQT Mobile has a far superior design and user experience compared to the apps I use from other banks.” – Leading global hedge fund

“Me personally, I love the overall feel of the Goldman Sachs app. I use it more often than all the other trade execution apps out there. I like the very simple interface. It’s so easy when I want to trade or place an order. I like the way it looks so simple and is so easy to use. That’s the primary reason I use it. I also like the sales support behind it” – Influential Asian bank

First case study

Price transparency