A mobile application for investors and advisors to understand how current news impacts their specific holdings, with real-time tracking, alerts, and simulations.
Client
Timeline
Type
Design
Project vision
Kickoff
For this project, the team took a goal-directed design approach that proved to be quite effective in our design efforts. We found qualitative research methods to be the most useful, consisting of a kick-off meeting, review of business needs, stakeholder interviews, persona hypothesis, and competitive analysis.
We started out by asking ourselves some initial key questions.
We found data from our stakeholder interviews to be the most effective understandings we gathered. We then used an affinity diagram to separate the data into groups of tasks that were further categorized by high level goals for improvement in efficiency, process, and value. Recognizing the conflicts of self-interest versus user needs allowed us to focus on shaping user goals and how these goals would in-turn also affect the business' goals.
This would then lead to determining that the product would need to be a mobile application with a freemium business model. We called it the InvestmentNews Impact Tracker.
Personas
Competitive Analysis
User Journey
I constructed a user flow of what initiating the app would look like while exploring different options. This helps the team understand ways users can interact with the product, as well as allowing us to see navigation through user goals.
Wireframes
After creating some low-fidelity wireframes and thinking through the preliminary flow, we iterated on what was necessary, what wasn't, and what areas needed improvement.
Iteration
Design System
The standard InvestmentNews website and app consisted of red and black as the main color scheme. Since the Impact Tracker offered a distinct set of services, the team determined that a separate style guide would help establish its own identity. To position the app as a premium fintech product, I introduced a dark navy and gold palette to create a sophisticated and high-value aesthetic.
Final Product
Monetization
To align with InvestmentNews business goals, our team explored strategies to upsell features and premium content without disrupting the experience of the core users. One approach mixed in paid advertisements seamlessly within the news article section. Another involved introducing a premium account tier, which unlocked advanced features such as unlimited market simulations and exclusive analyst summaries of moves within the market.
Takeaways
As someone already interested in stock market strategies, this project opened my eyes to how the business-to-business model operates and how companies approach their customers.
This was my first time figuring out ways to meet business goals opposed to just designing for visual aesthetic and finding empathic ways to make a user's experience easier. It was fun creating the different types of personas, but being able to interview stakeholders and learn about their needs from a business perspective was a fantastic insight. It allowed me to have a better understanding of myself and the bias I had going into the project.
I also learned that if you design with a balance of meeting business goals with user needs, you will have a higher chance of the project succeeding. This was a great lesson for which I will be using in future projects.