Design and Research

Tradestation

2018-2020

Major gains across web and mobile, and new ways to trade securities.

Web Trading Redesign

TradeStation’s Web Trading platform was an unfunded and largely unused sideshow in 2018. Research showed us that it was too confusing for new users, and lacked functional usefulness needed by advanced users.

Business Goals

Increase new user retention by funneling them into a newly designed web app with in-app tutorial guides
Increase migration of existing users from desktop to web as part of a SaaS DTI

My Role

I led UX research, UX strategy, and process alignment with Product and Engineering. I worked across stakeholders, traders, and customer support to define what was needed to change to drive adoption.

Discovered Problems

I created a strategic research system to synthesize feedback from Avid’s hundreds of thousands of users across sales calls, voice of customer, support logs, interviews, and surveys (general, NPS, and CSAT).

Our system was reviewed by representatives from Airtable and UserTesting.com, who stated it was the most sophisticated Insight scoring method they’d come across with their customers.

Tied Conversion, Churn, and ARR to expressed user needs mathematically.
Partnered with Product to give roadmap accurate ROI estimates based on real user needs and metrics.
This process is codified in https://univrs.ai/

We also conducted Discovery and Evaluative research across all major product lines, including daily user interviews, surveys, contextual inquiries, usability studies, tree testing, and focus groups, among others. The volume of insights and value generated by me and my team was unprecedented.

Design Requirements

Fully responsive window with support for multiple windows and monitors
Sophisticated expand/collapse panel behavior coupled with layout templates to limit awkward panel arrangements
Fully redesigned portfolio panel
Fully redesigned checkout flow and UI
Brand new Options Finder feature of my own invention
Status indicators showing connection, status, trade updates, etc
UI style and color overhaul
Multiple panels (tabs) per frame
Onboarding education via WalkMe-style tutorials

Outcomes

40% YoY Web Trading growth, massively exceeding the KPI
Double-digit increase in new user retention (I forget the exact number, it’s been some years and I didn’t write that one down)
Helped establish UX as a facilitator and helpful partner to both Product and Dev

Mike Walton

Senior Product Owner, Web Trading, Tradestation

During Anthony’s time at TradeStation, we worked on numerous project teams together.

As a Sr. UX designer, Anthony excelled. He was extremely easy to work with and he always did his “homework” prior to the kickoff of a new project.

He truly cared about and took complete ownership of any task assigned to him. His knowledge of the different design tools was unparalleled.

I look forward to working with Anthony in the future. He will be an asset to any company that he works for during his career.

Visual Design Gallery

Design and Research

Tradestation

2018-2020

Major gains across web and mobile, and new ways to trade securities.

Web Trading Redesign

Business Goals

Increase new user retention by funneling them into a newly designed web app with in-app tutorial guides
Increase migration of existing users from desktop to web as part of a SaaS DTI

My Role

I led UX research, UX strategy, and process alignment with Product and Engineering. I worked across stakeholders, traders, and customer support to define what was needed to change to drive adoption.

Discovered Problems

Our system was reviewed by representatives from Airtable and UserTesting.com, who stated it was the most sophisticated Insight scoring method they’d come across with their customers.

Tied Conversion, Churn, and ARR to expressed user needs mathematically.
Partnered with Product to give roadmap accurate ROI estimates based on real user needs and metrics.
This process is codified in https://univrs.ai/

Design Requirements

Fully responsive window with support for multiple windows and monitors
Sophisticated expand/collapse panel behavior coupled with layout templates to limit awkward panel arrangements
Fully redesigned portfolio panel
Fully redesigned checkout flow and UI
Brand new Options Finder feature of my own invention
Status indicators showing connection, status, trade updates, etc
UI style and color overhaul
Multiple panels (tabs) per frame
Onboarding education via WalkMe-style tutorials

Outcomes

40% YoY Web Trading growth, massively exceeding the KPI
Double-digit increase in new user retention (I forget the exact number, it’s been some years and I didn’t write that one down)
Helped establish UX as a facilitator and helpful partner to both Product and Dev

Mike Walton

Senior Product Owner, Web Trading, Tradestation

During Anthony’s time at TradeStation, we worked on numerous project teams together.

As a Sr. UX designer, Anthony excelled. He was extremely easy to work with and he always did his “homework” prior to the kickoff of a new project.

He truly cared about and took complete ownership of any task assigned to him. His knowledge of the different design tools was unparalleled.

I look forward to working with Anthony in the future. He will be an asset to any company that he works for during his career.

Visual Design Gallery

Design and Research

Tradestation

2018-2020

Major gains across web and mobile, and new ways to trade securities.

Web Trading Redesign

Business Goals

Increase new user retention by funneling them into a newly designed web app with in-app tutorial guides
Increase migration of existing users from desktop to web as part of a SaaS DTI

My Role

I led UX research, UX strategy, and process alignment with Product and Engineering. I worked across stakeholders, traders, and customer support to define what was needed to change to drive adoption.

Discovered Problems

Through extensive customer interviews, ethnographic field studies, behavioral analytics, community surveys, Support call shadowing and analysis, trade flow data, and expert analysis we discovered a number of key issues:

The Account Opening Process was preposterously 52 screens, leaving no patience for learning a complex trading platform once complete
The app itself was locked at a particular resolution which was far too small for serious traders, who often have 3 or more monitors
The app could only appear on one monitor at a time and could not ‘float’ panels
There was no customization regarding what panels were where in the UI
Options Trading was crippled functionally
It was very challenging to keep track of your asset portfolio content
Checkout was a confusing disaster
The News panel was simple unformatted ASCII text looking like DOS
No onboarding of any kind and no way to access Support from the app

Design Requirements

Fully responsive window with support for multiple windows and monitors
Sophisticated expand/collapse panel behavior coupled with layout templates to limit awkward panel arrangements
Fully redesigned portfolio panel
Fully redesigned checkout flow and UI
Brand new Options Finder feature of my own invention
Status indicators showing connection, status, trade updates, etc
UI style and color overhaul
Multiple panels (tabs) per frame
Onboarding education via WalkMe-style tutorials

Outcomes

40% YoY Web Trading growth, massively exceeding the KPI
Double-digit increase in new user retention (I forget the exact number, it’s been some years and I didn’t write that one down)
Helped establish UX as a facilitator and helpful partner to both Product and Dev

Mike Walton

Senior Product Owner, Web Trading, Tradestation

During Anthony’s time at TradeStation, we worked on numerous project teams together.

As a Sr. UX designer, Anthony excelled. He was extremely easy to work with and he always did his “homework” prior to the kickoff of a new project.

He truly cared about and took complete ownership of any task assigned to him. His knowledge of the different design tools was unparalleled.

I look forward to working with Anthony in the future. He will be an asset to any company that he works for during his career.