Designing an informational feature on Wealthsimple Trade that would enable users to compare stocks

Time + Duration
March 2021
2 weeks
Roles
Team Leader
Research + Strategy
Interface Design
Kind
Self-Directed Project

Overview

Compare is a conceptual feature for the Wealthsimple Trade application. The goal of the feature is to provide low to mid level users the ability to compare multiple stocks of their choice with each other. Compare is also an educational feature that encourages users to explores metrics across stocks, and deepen their understanding of the stocks they are interested in relative to other ones.

As an avid Wealthsimple Trade user, Compare is a passion project that I believe aligns with Wealthsimple Trade’s goal of being an approachable self-directed platform that empowers amateur investors to participate in the stock market.

Context

Wealthsimple Inc. is one of Canada’s leading online investment management service, boasting 20,000 clients with $750M in assets. One of its characteristics is its minimalist and user-friendly design - the word ‘simple’ is in its name after all. Wealthsimple provides several services, namely Wealthsimple Invest, Wealthsimple Cash, Wealthsimple Tax and Wealthsimple Trade. For this project, the feature is imagined to exist on the self-directed brokerage Wealthsimple Trade.

Issue

As previously mentioned, Wealthsimple Trade is known for its simple and easy to use interface. Since Wealthsimple targets millenials, a generation infamously known for having poor or non-existent investments, it makes sense that the visual language used throughout the application is approachable, minimalist and user friendly.

However, while Wealthsimple Trade is successful at making it easy for users to buy and sell stocks, there seemed to be missing an educational and explorative experience that I believe would mesh well with the simplicity and approachability of the application.

Based on personal experience as someone who was new to trading and had limited knowledgable of stocks (besides the popular ones), I felt stifled in my investment learning. Yes, I had downloaded the application and browsed through the categories on the home page....


But, there was still that discernible ‘What now?’ moment. I was excited to invest, but at the same time I was not sure if I was ready to spend money on a stock that I did not feel sufficiently knowledgable about. Furthermore, the selection of a category would bring me to a long list of stocks under the category, which gave me slight option paralysis - I wasn’t sure which stock to click first or why the prices varied so much etc.

I did most of my learning about stocks outside of the application through various sources, which is expected because fitting in every possible information about each individual stock would defeat the simplicity of Wealthsimple Trade. Nonetheless, the user experience was lacking in introducing users to stocks and especially the variety of them per category.

Solution

The Compare feature would allow Wealthsimple Trade users to understand more about stocks relative to other similar stocks. Through this feature, Wealthsimple Trade can extend its lacking educational quality into a more interactive and personal one. It would encourage users to learn more about other stocks through contrast and comparison, and thereby not offering any additional information that is not already present in the application itself. This would preserve the simplicity of Wealthsimple while making it more explorative.

Interviews

We conducted 6 interviews to understand how others were utilizing Wealthsimple Trade for their investment goals. Upon completing the interview process, I categorized the users into 3 distinct types: The High Profiency User, The Mid Profiency User and the Low Profiency User.

The High Profiency User
  • Spent average more than 15-20 times a week using the application actively using it, most of that type spent monitoring their portfolios and about 5-10% of the remaining time on actual trading.
  • They extensively utilized external resources to educate themselves on stocks, namely Finbiz, MarketWatch and BarChart.
  • Paid close attention to news sentiment prior to purchasing a stock
  • Upon learning about a stock, it takes them anywhere from 15 minutes to a week to decide on buying it.
  • Took an interest in high-growth stocks with medium to high volatility

The Mid Profiency User
  • Spent an average of 3-4 times a week using the application, with about a 25% frequency making a trade
  • Did not sure external resources to learn about stocks, and relied predominantly on news sentiment and Internet forum discussions to help with making a decision on which stocks to buy/sell
  • Mainly traded ETFs (exchange-traded fund: a basket of shares which are sold on an exchange, combining stocks, mutual funds, bonds, etc.) for portfolio diversity and reducing volatility

The Low Profiency User
  • Has only used Wealthsimple 1-5 times ever.
  • Used it primarily to buy popular or ‘hype’ stocks (stocks that are highly volatile and have a high speculation for growth)
  • Learned about hype stocks from social media, podcasts and YouTube

Based on the 3 types of users interviewed, we decided to focus on The Mid Profiency User as the target audience for the Compare feature as we believe it would benefit them the most by providing them more autonomy to learn about stocks through comparison.

The Low Profiency User would be the secondary audience. While they may not get the most out of it as infrequent users, I believe it would encourage them to learn about other stocks besides the popular/’hype’ ones available on the platform.

The High Proficency User mainly uses Wealthsimple Trade to trade and monitor stocks, with little exploration done on the application itself because of their extensive use of more sophisticated tools for their personal portfolio goals. Thus, compare may not be of use to this group.

Process

Affinity Diagram
We gathered all of our thoughts, ideas and concerns during about an hour long affinity diagram sprint. After writing out our thoughts on post its, we ordered them according to Goals, Features and Fears. This process helped the team to develop a collective understanding of Compare’s goals, touchpoints, flesh out some potential ideas for the interface, and acknowledge the potential drawbacks of such an application.


Developing our Guiding Principles
From our affinity diagram, we managed to narrow down our scope into 4 key guiding principles that would help us in the upcoming our user interface ideation stage.
  1. Target low to mid level proficiency users
    Focus on making stock metrics more accessible. Make sure to include key visual elements (such as the normative line graph) in the new feature to explain information to encourage visual understanding.
  2. Keep it as (Wealth)simple as possible
    Do not visually deviate from the application, make the feature blend seamlessly into the background.
  3. Encourage exploration and try to contain it within the application
    Since low to mid level users, especially the former, do not frequently use other tools for their investing needs, ensure that ‘Compare’ a sufficient enough tool that would allow users to make a decision on which stocks to trade.

Interface

First Iteration
In our first iteration, we established two main points of entry into the Compare feature. The first entry would take the user from the home page to a unique search screen with greyed out placeholders that the users could input with their stock of choice. The second entry point would have stocks presented in modules that could be scrolled horizontally. Both would entry points would take the user to a comparison page that could only compare two stocks at once.


Second Iteration
In our second iteration, we made some changes to the search screen in entry point 1 to include some recommended groups of 2 to 4 of similar stocks across various categories. We also refined the main comparison page to compare unlimited stocks and not just 2. We kept the idea of having 2 stocks to compare at once, but being able to select an option from a tray of others stocks to compare with the primary stock. A ‘switch’ button was placed in the middle to allow users to switch the stock of comparison with the primary stock at any given point.


Third Iteration
In our third iteration, we primarily made significant changes to the comparison page. We decided to drop the tray idea from the second iteration and instead have a maximum of 4 stocks indicated at the top of the screen. This constraint allowed us to have more than 2 stocks without the complexity in the second iteration which we felt deviated too much from Wealthsimple’s design. The stocks would be displayed in a block format upon entering the screen for easy addition and removal from the comparison, and is transformed into a sticky row at the top. The stock statistical values therefore becomes aligned with its respective stock, allowing for visual comparison across the various stock metrics.

Result

First Entry Point
The first entry point can be accessed via the application home page. Positioned in the ‘browse stocks’ module, the comparison button fits well here amongst its ‘top lists’ and ‘categories’ counterparts.

Upon selecting a stock or a preset from the search screen, users are immediately taken into the compare feature. They can add more stocks into the mix, or remove them by scrolling to the top.

Second Entry Point
The second entry point was implemented with low profiency users in mind. Given their preference for purchasing hype stocks, we wanted to encourage exploration within the iconic singular stock interface. Therefore, as the user is viewing a specific stock, they can view previews of other similar stocks and choose to compare it if they are interested.

Including access to Compare within the singular stock screen also encourages users to continually explore different stocks, going from one recommendation to another. It eliminates that ‘What now?’ problem addressed earlier, by giving users the option to continue to explore related stocks without being stifled - and eventually making a more informed and clear choice of the stock they would like to trade.

Reflection

A big take away from this project was the importance of guidelines and constraints. Due to the self-directed nature of the project, it was at times challenging to mitigate opinions about what was best for the design of the application. The primary, secondary research combined with the affinity diagram helped the team flesh out valuable, rich ideas for the application that we would later narrow down and refine into an aesthetically and functionally sound feature design for Wealthsimple Trade.

Our guiding principles significantly helped us during the interface ideation phase, to ensure that we were aligning our ideas with the goals that we formed as a team.

As the team leader for the project and visionary for the idea of the Wealthsimple Trade feature design, I learned how to communicate my ideas in a succint and cohesive fashion, know when to step in during disputes and encourage my team to ideate with the design process and usability heuristics in mind.