Make investing decisions faster and easier using Finance Bubbles
Real-time Stock Tracker via Google Search Results
I was the sole UX Designer and UX researcher of Finance Bubbles- a real time stock feature that allows users to pin stocks on Android. I made financial information easier for people to see throughout the day.
Product
Andriod
Skills
UX Design
UX Research
Product Management
My role
UX Designer and UX Researcher
Timeline
Q2 2022-Q2 2023
Collaborators
My manager, product manager, engineers
User Persona: Mike
Mike is an experienced Investor who knows how to invest in the market
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Medium to high income
has spare income to spend
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Milennial
in a stable career making a steady income
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Wants to keep track of financial information in a timely matter
Problem
User Goal
Business Goal
Success Metrics
How might we make real-time stock tracking easier for Mike?
Mike is an experienced investor who wants to be able to monitor certain stocks he cares about. Staying up to date with the latest price changes can require lots of constant app switching and delays for apps to load or refresh, interrupting his current flow and causing some FOMO / anxiety.
Real-time Stock Updates
Mike would like to receive timely information about how an event might affect a stock or be able to follow a volatile stock. How about we remove friction so Mike can easily update stock prices in real-time?
Attract more users to Google Finance by making financial decisions easier and faster.
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Number of users that pin a finance bubble
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Number of finance bubbles pinned / user
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Number of users that use the bubble to navigate to the immersive
RESEARCH
Background Research
Research Goal: to discover the needs of investors when using a feature like Finance Bubbles.
This was my first project in finance and in order to better understand the subject I decided to do some background research. I interviewed 5 Google internal employees on the Google Finance team to better understand their investing habits to figure out how finance bubbles can be used to help them make investing decisions.
Participants and Quotes
if I want to buy Microsoft stock, I might not do it immediately. I might kind of sit on that thought and if there's a day or the whole Market goes down, like to 3%, that might be a good day for me to get into it.
Product Manager at Google Finance
It's just looking at my performance and against some sort of Benchmark to see. Like, am I doing well against how the overall markets are performing? Do I have a good amount of risk and exposure, what's my allocations?
Product Manager at Google Finance
I'm curious about how the S&P 500 is doing as a proxy for how my overall Investments are doing. And again if it goes up significantly or goes down significantly. I'm just curious why? And I'll look up relevant news.
Product Manager at Google Finance
Research Insights
Research uncovered needs of users that can be solved by this feature
Buy low and sell high
When an investor wants to buy low and sell high they follow a stock to find a good time to buy, when the market is down
Earnings Call
When an investor sees and earnings call coming, they are motivated to follow a stock more closely.
Initial Public Offering
An investor may want to keep track of how an IPO will affect a stock price.
Volatile Stock Market
An investor may want to follow a volatile stock or market.
Merger
An investor may want to keep track of a merger that is announced.
Day Trading
An investor may want to keep track of a stock in order to make profit on the same day.
Empathizing with Mike's current experience
Scenario: Mike is an advanced investor who currently follows Google stock.
Previous Feature
Usability Test
This idea was modeled after another feature called sports bubbles, where users can track the score of a sports game. My task was to create a similar feature but for Google Finance.
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The second round of research was a café study done at a café at Google. The goal was to test any usability issues with the prototype.
Test Outcomes
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On a scale from 1 to 5, on average, participants rated the feature as a 4.5.
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The “pin the stock” button was not discoverable. Only one participant was able to discover the button without being prompted.
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The participants felt that the feature was situational for specific events such as an earnings call, IPO, tracking a volatile stock, and a company merger.
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I also realized that the earnings call information was not discoverable either.
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We tested a call-out and noticed that many of the participants missed it. This is typical for callouts.
Design Explorations
I made several iterations of the collapsed and the expanded bubble. For the collapsed bubble, according to background research, I found out that the most important information was the ticker, percentage change, and price, so I explored different placements, fonts, colors, and iconography. I also explored adding a spark line so that users can have an understanding of how the stock is performing.
Banners
Earning Call
Expanded State - News
Final Design
Redlines
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Dark Mode
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What did I learn?
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At the beginning of this project, I had difficulty learning what to design/ iterate due to a lack of knowing the user and their motivations. I believe creating a user story and doing background research helped me better understand my users' pain points.
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It was great that I also had sports bubbles as a reference to see how to design the error state.
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Collaborated with cross-functional teams, the eng, and pm across multiple timezones.
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I would've spent more time exploring different variations of the collapsed bubble and the expanded bubble.
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I would've added some more interactions on the bubble that can indicate that the bubble can be dragged on the final design