All Projects
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM FIRST ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
It was challenging to apply accessibility guidelines on the new features due to the existing design’s color contrast issues. We had to spend substantial amount of time to do research on dark mode and make the color contrast work for it.
If we had more time: I would do second round of testing with high fidelities to validate our design solutions. I would also discover more on how to optimize dark mode designs as well as deliver light mode screen designs.
Proved how efficient usability tests are: The founders and engineers of Lantern were very happy with the insights and feedback that came from usability tests, they mentioned that they want to invest more into usability testing from now on.
What’s next: After presenting the deliverables to stakeholders, we hand-off everything to the developers. The next step is for these designs to go live.
We reviewed the existing research and design
Reviewed all the existing designs and app to learn more about the product's background. We also went through the previous research and design work to pick up from where it’s left. The documents consisted of Personas, User Interviews and synthesis of the user interviews, which then informed our design decisions.
Insights from previous researches:
-
Users like the simplicity of the interface but are eager for the app to become more functional.
-
Users already access information from variety of sources.
-
Users embrace Lantern as a tool that can truly help them make better-informed decisions about how to trade options.
-
Users like being able to switch to dark mode.
-
As a Persona, Chris is a financial planner that has a few years of experience in the stock market that wants to learn options trading.
-
Users want to place an order in a single go to cut down trading time.
Secondary Research
According to the research within the previous 5 years, more than 1 million immigrants come to USA every year and the 10 most common problems they are facing are:
-
Language barriers
-
Employment opportunities
-
Housing
-
Access to local services (health care, legal advice and access to mental health or social services)
-
Transportation issues
-
Cultural differences
-
Raising children
-
Prejudice
-
Isolation
-
The weather
Secondary Research
According to the research within the previous 5 years, more than 1 million immigrants come to USA every year and the 10 most common problems they are facing are:
-
Language barriers
-
Employment opportunities
-
Housing
-
Access to local services (health care, legal advice and access to mental health or social services)
-
Transportation issues
-
Cultural differences
-
Raising children
-
Prejudice
-
Isolation
-
The weather
User Flows
User flows lay out the path that user goes through to the product. We identified 2 red routes to represent the essential flows. These red routes helped decide the screens needed for the MVP.
-
Link/Unlink Brokerage Account
-
Execute Trades
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM FIRST ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
BUT HOW MUCH MONEY I'M MAKING FROM ALL ACCOUNTS
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM SECOND ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
WHAT DOES TRADE EVEN MEAN?
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM SECOND ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
HOW DO I CONNECT MY BROKERAGE ACCOUNT?
Competitive Research
After going through the research Lantern already had, we decided to go with Competitive Heuristic Research to analyze the existing similar products in the market. The 6 products we analyzed includes Robinhood, Commonstock, Fidelity, E-trade, Tastyworks and Atom FInance. We focused our analysis on the features
-
Link/Unlink Brokerage Account
-
Trade Execution
Analysis of competitors provided clarification for the flows and design decisions for Lantern.
Secondary Research
According to the research within the previous 5 years, more than 1 million immigrants come to USA every year and the 10 most common problems they are facing are:
-
Language barriers
-
Employment opportunities
-
Housing
-
Access to local services (health care, legal advice and access to mental health or social services)
-
Transportation issues
-
Cultural differences
-
Raising children
-
Prejudice
-
Isolation
-
The weather
Secondary Research
According to the research within the previous 5 years, more than 1 million immigrants come to USA every year and the 10 most common problems they are facing are:
-
Language barriers
-
Employment opportunities
-
Housing
-
Access to local services (health care, legal advice and access to mental health or social services)
-
Transportation issues
-
Cultural differences
-
Raising children
-
Prejudice
-
Isolation
-
The weather
1st Iteration of High Fidelities
After analyzing the findings and coming up with solutions, we came up with high fidelity mockups. Integrating the visual design into our ideas took substantial amount of time because we wanted to make sure our designs were consistent with previous designs. We had to constantly communicate our design decisions with stakeholders to get their approvals.
Why did we start with dark mode: Since dark mode is the current default mode of Lantern and also one of the UI Design trends, we started with dark mode designs.
Accessibility Issues Found
Once we started working on the UI, we discovered the accessibility issues of previous designs. After getting the approval from the stakeholders, we worked on optimizing the colors with the goal of making them compliant with WCAG AA guidelines.
2nd Round of Usability Tests
We recruited 5 participants for our moderated usability tests.
Why specific users were picked: We looked for users that have knowledge of the stock market and experience in placing conditional orders. Despite being hard, finding knowledgeable users were very important for our tests due to the complexity of the stock market.
Why moderated usability tests: Moderated usability tests allows for the highest level of interaction with the user. Even though we had time constraints we knew we needed to moderate the usability tests to get the best value out of it.
We tested the following tasks within our scope:
-
Trade execution with dollars/shares
-
Connect brokerage accounts
-
Switch between brokerage accounts while putting an order
-
Execute a conditional order
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM FIRST ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
DOLLAR VS SHARE?
FINDINGS AND SOLUTIONS FROM SECOND ROUND OF USABILITY TESTS
HOW DO I PUT A CONDITIONAL ORDER?
"How might we help users effectively link/unlink their brokerage accounts and then execute trades based on their preferred brokerage on stocks, options and equities?"
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT
HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUPS
OH NO! THESE DESIGNS ARE NOT ACCESSIBLE...
VALIDATION
5 USABILITY TESTS WERE DONE WITH TARGETS USERS
MOCKUPS & TESTING
DISCOVERING PROBLEMS EARLY ON IS CRUCIAL
SUMMARY
CHALLENGES TAUGHT ME A LOT
THE RESEARCH
Dollar amount is preferred by the majority when executing an order.
Default amounts are helpful when executing an order.
Trade keyword is confusing.
KEY INSIGHTS
MAJORITY OF USERS TRADE DOLLARS INSTEAD OF SHARES
High Fidelity Mockups and Prototype
After receiving and integrating plenty of valuable feedback, we worked on 2nd iteration of high fidelities. These high fidelity mockups were turned into a prototype on Figma to showcase the changes to the stakeholders.
More validation needed: Due to time constraints, we could not run another round of usability tests to validate our solutions. However, we made sure to inform the stakeholders.
