Fixed income trading analytics platform
Project description
In Fall 2015, I redesigned a fixed income trading analytics platform for a private investment management company. The application needed to be migrated from a massively complex Excel file into a streamlined, efficient web application.
(Images have been withheld to honor client confidentiality agreements.)
Process
Over 20 days, I worked with the stakeholders to determine their needs. Based on their feedback and functional requirements, I designed the framework, workflows, and wireframes, then collaborated with a visual designer to create the final designs and style guide.
Challenges
The users were reluctant to migrate, but the original application kept crashing and could no longer support their increasingly complicated macros and data feeds. We needed to supply a design that was similar to what they knew and loved to get buy-in, but one that also would increase efficiency and work on a web platform.
Only a handful of people used this app, but they used it heavily every day, and it needed to be extremely efficient. In a way, it’s harder to design for a small group of people with different needs, because users in a small group can each advocate for changing the design to support their own unique and competing needs, whereas designs for a large user base usually needs to be more generalized.
Users needed to see a large amount of data on their screens and didn’t want any unused space. At the same time, they wanted the app to be extremely easy to use, since traders need to work at lightning speed. In the end, we provided a balance of usability and data density.