LightPoint Financial Technology is a financial technology company that provides solutions to hedge funds, investment banks, and asset managers. LightPoint offers a product suite called Front Office for portfolio managers and traders to manage their books.

role

Designer & Developer

team structure

1 designer/developer
1 mid-level developer

activities

User research
Sketching and lo-fidelity designs
High-fidelity UI designs
Wireframing
Usability testing
UI Development

business goal

LightPoint wants to build the next-generation of Front Office, a collection of tools to equip users make best portfolio management decisions and executions, ranging from security to trades. The suite is used by numerous types of users such as Compliance, DevOps, Management, Portfolio Managers, and more. LightPoint has decided to first focus on Book Monitor, a trading platform and Trade Ticket, an order execution for portfolio managers and traders. 

business requirements

• Incorporate trade ticket into BookMon tables
• Populate ticker symbol on trade ticket

demos and user research

Throughout the research phase, I was in constant communication with a business analyst at LightPoint, who was formerly a portfolio manager. He gave us a walk through of TradeTicket, demonstrating key workflows of a portfolio manager, and highlighting pains that users most often come across when using the application.

From the walkthrough, we captured major needs and pain points:

needs

• Both users need to open up trade ticket with position details populated
• Both users need to export strategies and/or positions to excel

Current Trade Ticket and User Pains

WANTS AND pain points

• User wants to see position details populated in the TradeTicket dialog, so they don't have to type in the ticker symbol
• User wants to receive specific warnings and confirmations from systems check, so they don't have to second guess their errors

Personas

primary personas

The primary personas are Portfolio Managers and Traders. The former are the "planners", and they strategize actions with Management to achieve their quarterly goals. The latter, traders are "executioners", they take the strategies created by PMs and execute trades. These two personas heavily use BookMon, as they monitor their portfolios and make day trades. The personas can be viewed here. 

The current state of the prototype is 2 iterations behind the design. The prototype can be viewed here. With the mockups and prototype, the developer and I get feedback from the Business Analyst, from confirming the major workflows are correct to rearranging form fields. 

Final Thoughts

**Update** This project is permanently on hold as client wants to work on a new project in Portfolio Margin (June 10th, 2018)

**Update** this project is currently on hold as the client is in the process of getting more funding (April 30th, 2018)

This page is actively updated as the project is still on-going. More details to come!