A tier 1 investment bank creates workflow efficiency through an integrated desktop solution for its US rates desk

One of the largest investment banks in North America reached out to Adaptive to design an innovative desktop solution to improve trade workflows and create efficiencies on the US Rates desk.

Challenge:

The client wanted to drive consistency at a macro level across the rates desk through a redesigned desktop trading solution that would minimize context switching and increase workflow efficiencies.

Solution:

Adaptive’s Experience Design team collaborated with the client’s Head of US Rates and other technical and business stakeholders to understand existing workflows and design reusable patterns, leveraging its UI Starter Kit, that would ultimately lay the foundation for a larger unified desktop strategy across the desk.

The brief

The US Rates desk required an efficient solution to view and analyze their risk models, submit RFQ tickets, view trades, and manage coverage, with the goal of reducing clicks and saving time. Their current workflow was costing them money on trades due to a user interface that was difficult to navigate, missed notifications, and lengthy context switching between multiple platforms, all slowing down their ability to complete trades. Traders needed an intuitive way to navigate through RFQ tickets quickly and minimize errors.

The client had concerns about the overall desktop experience and wanted to drive consistency at a macro level across the trading floor. They wanted an application based design with less whitespace that took up minimal desktop real estate. The client engaged Adaptive to design a new desktop trading UI that addressed all of these concerns while creating a consistent look and feel across all applications.

The discovery phase:

Adaptive’s design team led multiple workshops to identify users’ key workflows and understand the current system landscape. Collaborating with the client’s stakeholders and traders, Adaptive mapped out their core challenges and requirements and the overall product vision, which allowed Adaptive to help prioritize key functionality.

Key functionality:

Working closely with the Fixed Income Head of Desk, Adaptive documented the traders’ fragmented application landscape and focused on enhancing the workflow and visual design of two areas that traders interact with daily:

1. Analysing Risk
2. Responding to RFQs

Design challenges:

It is common for traders’ desktops to have a lot of visual noise; workflows can get messy switching from one application to the next.

Specifically, traders at the client’s Rates desk had multiple risk monitors open throughout the day and incoming RFQs popping up all over the desktop. Moreover, it was not always clear which trader was covering which trades, causing ownership issues.

When defining the workflows, the traders highlighted the importance of being able to simultaneously run multiple risk models, view risk across books or desks, and identify high-risk trades easily. For RFQs, traders needed a more intuitive way to navigate through the ticket, with better use of UX patterns, visual hierarchy, and minimal clutter to minimize errors and respond quickly.

The visual design was a key element. Using a common and consistent design language, we designed with the following in mind:

Color has meaning:

Key elements of the trade ticket and risk data grid utilized color to highlight important information. This allowed users to quickly assess priorities without the need to scan all data points on screen.

Visual hierarchy to create efficiencies:

Creating a more organized layout structure on the RFQ and logically grouping related information saves time, reduces errors and allows the user to focus on the required entry fields.

Focus on finance-specific fields:

Certain input fields were optimized for minimal clicks and fast input. This included tick fields for yield and spread, larger inputs for the size and rate, and larger click areas for buttons.

By solving these challenges, traders can save time and manage their workflows more efficiently.