Designed an innovative options trading product - a financial tool with visually modern, data-driven analytics that empowers traders to make confident decisions. Read more on Trading Central’s website.
Motivation
Trading Central provides comprehensive market research tools. Recognizing the growing popularity of options trading, the company identified a market gap for a product offering personalized options analysis.
Options trading is notoriously complex, often intimidating new investors and challenging experienced traders.
Our goal was to create a user-friendly, comprehensive tool that would demystify options analysis and empower traders of all levels.
With a one-year deadline, we prioritized developing a minimum viable product featuring two core components: Strategy Lab and Options Dashboard.
Stage 1: Strategy Lab
By combining previous user research with the newly conducted in-house interviews, netnography, and competitive analysis, we found that:
Most novice options traders have solid financial backgrounds.
Traders seek tools aligned with their diverse strategies.
Investors desire educational content to build confidence.
Leveraging these insights, we build a feature that empowers novice options investors by providing a guided, personalized approach to options trading. Through an intuitive 4-step questionnaire that assesses trading preferences and risk tolerance, users are presented with tailored options strategies that align with their individual investment profile.
Stage 2: Options Dashboard
Options data often appears as complex tables filled with numbers, which can be overwhelming for beginner options traders.
A classic example of options product from Yahoo Finance
By collaborating with financial analysts, we identified key data points that influence buying or selling decisions and transformed them into intuitive visualizations.
Options data visualization - first drafts
Challenges
Tight Deadlines: Each feature had to be completed within a strict 6-month timeframe, which pushed us to work efficiently and prioritize effectively within the agile framework.
Changing Data Providers: Several changes in data providers required us to continuously redesign the product, testing our ability to adapt quickly.
Knowledge Gaps: Most team members had limited to no knowledge of options trading, which created a learning curve for everyone involved.
Visualizing Complex Data: We needed to translate complex options terminology and data into clear, easy-to-understand visualizations—quite a task when you’re new to options yourself.
Results
Validated Market Fit: Successfully secured licenses from two brokers, confirming the product's value and market potential.
Next Steps
Post-launch testing: Conducting further usability tests to ensure accessibility standards as well as users’ goals & needs are met.
Expanding features: Creating an educational platform that provides easy-to-understand content to help investors of all levels make informed decisions.
Post-mortem analysis: This project has taught us to involve stakeholder at every major design step to make sure our goals and expectations are aligned & plan ahead as much as possible.