Kotak Securities
as Product Designer at Obvious, remote 2020-21
Things I did..
Built a stock broking platform for novice as well as seasoned investors and traders of India, creating a new age investing experience.
I played many roles in this project, took ownership of feature deliveries, built a brand language and conducted research as well as design sprints.
Delivering features
Research
Sprints
Visual design
Some stuff I worked on..
Creating flexible watchlists
Challenge: While pre-defined lists were useful for novice users, we saw through research and feedback in release 1 that expert users want control over how they organise stocks and make lists.
Solution: I evolved the watchlist from being a singular list in release 1 to having the ability to create multiple in release 2. I iterated on labels for actions to find something that would communicate to the user group the actions they can take. As the actions evolved in time from new list to also managing lists, I brought those actions upfront for the user.
Creating and managing watchlist
States of Watchlist
Reducing anxiety in orders
Like any fintech platform, users are most worried about where their assets are. In this case, during order placement of stocks. On the backend, we know what stage the order is at and usually, in stock market, it takes around 2 days for stocks to be delivered to your demat account.
I created an Order Status card, inspired from delivery apps, to communicate clearly the status of the order. For experts, this was a relief and for novice user it became educational.
Order status as an expandable card
States of Order Status
Driving engagement through insights
Through sprints we understood that users wanted to snapshot summary of their weekly performance in the market, this was most useful for passive users who didn’t have time to track regularly. I developed, tested and executed this feature through two set of sprints.
Hypothesis building and iterating through continuous testing.
Branding & Illustration
Having a visual design background, I was given the opportunity to create a brand language for the product that reflected the legacy as well as had a fresh look. I worked with the larger team to slowly implement this visual style in design system, illustration system and communicate the same to engineers. I developed the illustration library for dark mode as well.
Research
I played a crucial role in research by setting up processes and templates for creating discussion guides and note taking.
I worked with the team on the insights we gathered through multiple studies and developed archetypes to better understand user behaviour. Based on these, we were able to come up directions for sprints.
A bit about what I learned..
Building for emotion
When designing financial services, trust is the key. One might assume people are rational about money but from research I discovered, that most people make decisions based on emotions when it comes to money. These emotions are influenced by the perception of the platform, from their own to their peers. If the platform gives information and offers education, people feel cared for. Many instances like these came out from research I conducted and I was able to advocate for the same with stakeholders.
Don’t go reinventing the wheel
Industry standards cannot be trumped when an industry as existed for this. For services like stock broking, at times borrowing from the industry can be the best way to reduce the learning curve for the users. Again, the primary and secondary research I conducted played a huge role in uncovering the most commonly used terms and design patterns.
Good Copy can do wonders
In this project, I learnt to pay close attention to UX copy. Finding simpler but accurate ways of communication is crucial for financial services and difficult at the same time. Unpacking people’s mental models, finding the most commonly used industry patterns, and simplifying them for a multi-lingual audience can immensely enhance the user experience.
Design the essentials, design them beautifully
People have only one goal, making money. You need to find the easiest way to enable them to do so. I noticed users don’t want to be distracted by what designers might call ‘delight’, so I focused on making information and flows clear and using visual elements to do that better.
Scaling a brand
Working with a legacy brand has its advantages, it offers brand loyalty & trust that no new brand can create. While building the visual brand for the app, the key challenge for me was to give it a fresh look that speaks ‘new age’ while utilizing the existing brand value.