IG Trading Platform
I was part of a team of 6 designers tasked with redesigning IG’s desktop trading platform to offer a modern, seamless trading experience to IG’s customers.
Client
IG Group
Year
2014-2015
Responsibilities
User Research, Stakeholder Workshops, Prototyping, Interaction Design
Overview
In 2014, IG initiated a strategic redesign of its desktop trading platform, rebuilding it from the ground up to address legacy technology challenges, fragmented user experiences, and slow release cycles. The goal was to create a cutting-edge trading platform that leveraged modern user interaction paradigms and years of accumulated insights to deliver a streamlined, cohesive experience.
Roles and Responsibilities
Research and Discovery: Collaborated with the UX team to conduct continuous discovery, user interviews, co-design sessions, and analytics reviews to uncover pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Stakeholder Engagement: Organized insights from customer support teams and analytics, presenting findings to stakeholders and aligning priorities with business goals.
Design Leadership: Defined key design challenges, led ideation workshops, and guided feature prototyping to balance simplicity and functionality for a diverse user base.
Key challenges and Solutions
Window Management
Challenge: Users struggled to organize platform windows, which often got lost behind one another.
Solution: Designed an intuitive window layout system that allowed users to easily manage and organize multiple windows on their screen.
Trade Forms:
Challenge: Trade forms were overly complex, confusing users with unclear terminology.
Solution: Created a simplified trade form for common tasks and an advanced version for complex orders, accommodating both novice and expert users.
Integrated Decision-Making Tools:
Challenge: The platform lacked news and information to support trading decisions.
Solution: Integrated news, trading signals, economic calendars and social feeds to provide real-time insights and empower users with actionable information.
Trade From Anywhere:
Challenge: Users wanted the ability to trade directly from stock tickers and prices without navigating to separate windows.
Solution: Simplified trade execution with micro-interactions that allowed users to place trades directly from market lists or modify trades directly on charts, minimizing navigation and delays.
Customizable Workspaces
Challenge: Users desired multiple, purpose-built trading workspaces.
Solution: Introduced a workspace feature, allowing users to set up and switch between custom layouts tailored to different trading needs.
Impact and Outcomes
Delivered a user-centric platform with improved efficiency and usability, catering to both novice and advanced traders.
Reduced complexity in high-frequency tasks while maintaining robust functionality for expert users.
Increased engagement by integrating real-time news and trading signals, helping users make more informed decisions.
Learnings
Stakeholder Collaboration: Involving stakeholders early and maintaining a feedback loop throughout the project ensures alignment and shared ownership.
Vision-Driven Leadership: A clear design vision and strong leadership motivate the team and create a cohesive, goal-driven process.
Prototyping and Testing: Early prototyping with developers and involving them in user testing fosters collaboration and ensures technical feasibility.
Balancing Simplicity and Complexity: Simplifying a system must be balanced with preserving functionality for advanced users.
Engaging Stakeholders in Design: Investing in ideation workshops with non-design stakeholders fosters innovative solutions and stronger buy-in.
