Designing an investment FinTech product: key differences and challenges
Things I learned designing Edda, the product for professional investors.
How different is the FinTech sphere from any other one, particularly in product design? Throughout the last 10 years of working in both UX/UI and product design, I had a chance to be involved in numerous projects across multiple different spheres. This gave me a solid foundation and overall, I came up with certain beliefs and things I prioritise at my work.
In my first years of learning le métier, I discovered that unique UI can be a great selling point for short design projects and new brands. Then, I found out that a well-grounded UX is by far the one-and-only foundation that every product should have. And oh! — gamification can rule not only the game sphere but also add a lot to the user behaviour patterns (no dark patterns, please).
For the last year, I’ve been working as a product designer in Edda, a collaborative tool for professional investors. It’s an exciting opportunity that brings challenging tasks on a regular basis and makes me constantly learn new things. I also spotted a great number of particular design solutions and patterns unique to the investment-FinTech sphere and I’m eager to share them in this article. Allons-y !
Know the financial sphere and develop a mindset
The first challenge you face working in FinTech is that you need not only a broad understanding of the industry and its niche but also in-depth expertise in its specific areas. Sometimes it might feel like opening Pandora's box — the user flows are complex and have multiple scenarios to tackle since user cases also vary greatly.
On a level of psychology, ideally, you should comprehend how your target audience operates daily, and how their brain works and perceives the information. Typically investors engage in a dynamic environment that requires them to constantly process large amounts of information, have strategic thinking, make quick and at the same time thoughtful decisions, and manage risks regularly.
This way, combining the sphere knowledge and deeper psychological understanding you’d be able to solve your tasks and get better results.
Deeper research
Once you get to know the foundation of the industry, there’s still a multitude of details and specific topics to learn. What I see in my daily work is that even when the project I’m approaching seems to be clear, it might hide a lot of tiny details that could influence significantly the final design solution.
Another reason why it is quite challenging is that the professional investment sphere is something you can’t relate much to compared to B2C products that you’re using frequently. The best approach would be to do as much research as possible syncing with different teams in your company, arranging the user interviews and testing the hypotheses.
Data is everywhere
In each of the projects and particular topics I’ve been working on, I noticed one thing — the pages and elements are full of data. Usually, this data consists of:
- financial details (e.g. amount invested, pre-money/post-money valuation, capital owned);
- dates (e.g. the operation made);
- company-related info (companies you invested in).
This again makes FinTech products stand aside from the others since many online products have less data and/or focus on specific types of content. Meanwhile, FinTech is all about the numbers in the first place.
There’s also a common belief that this type of product could be boring or repetitive to design—these are just tables full of numbers, where’s the beauty? My answer is—the beauty is in details.
Precise attention to UI details
Here’s the screenshot of my recent project where I worked on organising a large amount of companies’ data and the investments made in the user’s Portfolio. This project raised questions regarding UI in particular such as:
- the need to introduce a monospace font which helps to read numeric data faster and more efficiently;
- alignment — setting up the rules on when to use alignment to the right side depending on the type of data;
- the data can/cannot be updated — showcase different states;
While these questions may seem nuanced, they ultimately improve usability for end users. Then, what about the larger scale?
Prioritising the hierarchy
One of the recent topics we’ve worked through together with the design team was the text hierarchy. Text, alongside numeric data, is one of the crucial elements of the FinTech apps. Therefore, it needs a watchful eye to define the best results.
First, we spotted the problem — the current design system doesn’t have enough styles thus, in many cases, text styles don’t help to see the info instantly. We took various product screens that contain different UI elements to analyse and further, make new variations of styles. Having 5 products — Dealflow, Portfolio, Contacts, Portal, Documents — while each of them has multiple complex flows, doesn’t make it easy to find one and only solution. We prioritised the most used flows first.
In the end, we tested different line weights, removed unnecessary text styles and added the ones that bring consistent progression based on the maximum amount of titles we might have. At the moment it does look like the best solution but we’re definitely open to making more tests if we see that certain cases need even more careful consideration.
My personal conclusion
What I find the most interesting in working on the tool for professional investors is the constant challenge I get as a product designer.
I’m challenged to continuously learn more and dive deeper into the private equity and venture capital spheres. I’m also challenged by the complex UX flows with multiple variations depending on the types of users.
Another thing that I find particularly appealing at work is a neverending search for the beauty in tiny UI details. This in the end makes the interface solve its tasks which in turn, helps the investors to see and create a bright future.
Sources to learn and read
Private Equity and Venture Capital by Università Bocconi — a free course that covers a good foundation of PE & VC as well as some advanced topics in the field. Would come in handy for anyone looking to deepen their knowledge of the investment sphere.
Data Table Design UX Patterns — this article is literally my Bible when it comes to UX details of building the most user-friendly tables.
Table UX Best Practices — What Makes a Good Data Table? — good source of info from UXPin.
The ideal line length & line height in web design — this article brings in-depth exploration for such a small yet crucial UI detail.
