Block Trader

Banking

Man looking out of an office window on his mobile drinking a coffee

My Role

I was brought into the Bank as a UX consultant with the Head of UX to talk to the Bank to discuss the customer experience between Block Traders and Bank staff. Currently Block Trading is done prodominately over the phone. When it comes to Block Trading time is of the essence, blocks can be from $10 million to 100's of millions of dollars so being notified the instant it is available is important.

The Challenge

To optimise the workflow from traders wanting to buy or sell blocks of shares in companies to notifying the Bank of what blocks are on the market, we had to dive inside the mind of a trader.

  • What is a block?

  • How do traders acquire these blocks of shares?

  • What is the Bank's role in block trading?

  • What Does a trader look for in a block of shares?

To unlock the answers to these questions, we organised a meeting with a few of the managers who look after the bock trading side of the bank. They told us how the bank buy and sell large quantities of shares of other companies and put them out into the marketplace for traders to buy.

Design workshop

After getting research into how block trading works and the relationship with the bank and the block traders it was time to do a design workshop. This is where we would ask all the managers of the block trading department and get them to put all of their ideas onto paper.

We asked each of the managers to draw out their perfect scenario of how block trading would work and to present it to the whole group. The exercise we did was called 'Crazy 6'. With an A3 piece of paper they folded it into six squares. All of the managers were asked to come up with an idea in each of the six squares in 10 minutes.

Maquarie Bank managers sketching on paper Maquarie Bank managers sketching on paper

Analysing the research

After the workshop each of the managers educated us on what success would look like for them. Market fluctuations and having a list of all the latest blocks seemed to be the top must haves amounst the group. Also the ADV of the Block was very important for a trader. Based on this feedback and the research we had I started to put all these key aspects onto paper and see how they would all relate to one another to create the most effective and seamless system.

After a few rounds of iterations to the sketches we came to a point where we felt all the moving parts worked together and were meeting the company's KPI's. I then proceeded to create wireframes in Illustrator.

Awireframes of block trading App Awireframes of block trading App

We held another meeting with the managers and showed them the wireframes. We asked each of them to perform the tasks they normally would in their day-to-day roles and asked them to mark down in a red marker if anything was confusing or didn't make sense. After this workshop I made the amends to the wireframes and once it was approved internally I then moved onto high fidelity screens. Adding more of the look and feel to the product.

designed block trader screens designed block trader screens

This was then imported into Invision where the bank brought in real traders to test out the new prototype. We had approval internally of how the managers wanted it to function, now it was time to get some market feedback.

You can download the Block Trading App on Itunes

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