The Problem
Traders are always striving to work faster and minimize costs. To do so, traders could leverage an existing product that allowed them to automate part of their trading workflow. However, the existing product involved a convoluted form-style setup screen that used nonintuitive, engineering-heavy language that traders (especially new users of the product) found confusing.
Skills
Microcopy/UX writing
Collaboration
Design thinking
User workflow research
The Process
To help new users get started using this complex and powerful tool, I partnered with product and UX designers to help create a wizard, rather than a long, confusing form that left users unsure how to begin. The UX designers on my team crafted initial designs that provided a step-by-step walkthrough of each key task in the set up process. They provided initial designs to me for help in drafting the copy. I worked closely with the product manager to ensure the messaging was simple, but accurately conveyed the automation options. The original design relied on unlabeled or poorly described menus to define key settings. I replaced these drop-downs with intuitive questions like “What type of orders would you like to automate?” and “Where do you want to send this type of order?” and simple options for each question. When a setting was complex to explain, I worked with product and engineering stakeholders to create a question mark icon next to the setting that linked out to a help article on the topic with a deeper explanation. This allowed users unfamiliar with the product or a concept to learn more without cluttering the interface for experienced users.
The Outcome
The product team was very satisfied with the outcome, user feedback was positive, and product usage started trending upward. This project exemplified the powerful user impact that can happen when product, design, and content teams all work in concert to improve usability and increase adoption.