Background

Chipper Cash’s mission is to provide the most trusted and accessible financial services for people living in Africa and beyond. Chipper Cash offers stock trading, allowing users to buy fractional stock shares with as little as $1.

Problem

In Nigeria, where the local currency is volatile, there is a growing demand among Nigerians to invest in dollar-based assets as a way to build wealth.

How might we provide an intuitive experience, making it easy for users to invest in stocks?

My Role

Product Designer and Researcher

I am the sole designer for the Stocks Product owning the end-to-end design process. I also collaborate with Product Managers, Engineers, and Content Designers.

How It Started - The MVP Launch

When the MVP was launched, the Stocks product offered a limited selection of stocks, basic buy and sell functionality, and a brief introduction for each stock. Post-launch, we would monitor feedback from users through various channels such as social media and the app stores.

Learning from Users to Make Iterative Improvements

At Chipper, we tackle problems with a lean, yet considered approach. We focus on shipping to end-users and learning from feedback to make iterative improvements.

Once the Stocks product had been live for a few months, I conducted interviews with users to understand their experience trading stocks in the app and areas that could be improved.

Some things I wanted to learn were:

• How users feel about being required to answer onboarding questions

• Do they find it easy to buy and sell stocks

• What pieces of information regarding a company are most important when trading stocks
  

Overall, a majority of users had a positive experience trading stocks in the app. Based on the surveys and interviews, they found process of buying and selling stocks to be simple and straightforward.

The most common reason for negative or neutral ratings were due to users not making as much profit as they had hoped.

Key Areas for Improvement

Users mentioned the following items were not clear:

• When the stock market was closed

• The status of their pending orders

• Why their account was suspended for pattern day trading

Future Design Opportunities

• Trading in USD to mitigate fluctuating exchange rates

• Education on stocks

  • “We have to pay certain people to teach us those kind of things” - Interviewee

• Categories to sort through companies and diversify stocks

Iterating Based on User Feedback

Based on feedback from research, early improvements to the Stocks product were focused of resolving areas that caused confusion to users.

Letting Users Know When the Stock Market is Closed

A brief description was added above the Buy and Sell buttons to let users know the market is closed. Additional text also let them know their order will be executed once the stock market is open and may execute at a different price from what they currently see.

Letting Users Manage Pending Orders

Orders that have not yet been executed would now be visible in a Pending orders section. They would also be able to view details about or cancel their order.

Warning Users Before Suspensions for Day Trading

Users would now see a warning after each day trade so they’re aware that if they make 4 day trades within 5 days, their account will be suspended. There is also a link provided to learn more about pattern day trading.

Evolving with the Design System

As our design system continued to grow and evolve, many components in the design system were updated, which involved changes to button styles, font sizes, and more. I worked with Engineers to make sure the designs in the app would reflect the latest version of the design system while making changes to improve user experience along the way.

Improving the Onboarding Screens

Changes were made to reduce the number of screens users see as well as improving content clarity.

Encouraging users to make their first purchase

The empty state once users complete the onboarding process wasn’t very helpful.

In the new iteration, a brief description was added to remind users they can buy stock with as little as $1. We also use social influence to encourage users to make their first purchase, by showing popular stocks purchased by other users.

Highlighting information that’s most important to users

Based on previous research with users, most users considered stock price and price change to be the most important pieces of information, so these were highlighted with bolder fonts. Information hierarchy was also updated, giving more prominence to subheadings and statistics related to the user’s stock holdings.

Helping Users Reach Their Goals

Investing in stocks is inherently risky, but with the right tools and information, users can be more informed and aim to build wealth through strategic investment decisions.

A Diversified Portfolio -> Introducing Categories

Diversification across different assets helps manage risk and reduces the volatility of your portfolio over time. 

Over time, the number of stocks available to invest in grew from hundreds to thousands, and it was difficult for users to organically discover new stocks.

The introduction of categories was aimed at helping users diversify their portfolio as well as discovering new stocks based on their interests.

Staying Updated with Market Trends -> Introducing News and Statistics

News was introduced to show users relevant news articles related to a stock and let users know why a stock is trading higher or lower on any given day, and statistics provides additional data points.

Reducing Impact of Market Volatility -> Introducing Limit Orders and Recurring Buys

Limit orders allow users to control the price at which they buy, instead of being executed at the prevailing market price.

Recurring buys automatically invests on a fixed schedule, ignoring the emotional highs and lows of watching the market and trying to time trades perfectly.

Creating Components for the Design System

As I built new features for the Stocks products, I would also design new components when needed. Our Lead Designer would then add them to the design system, making any further refinements as necessary. Other designers would then be able to reuse those components in their designs as well.

Final Designs

Challenges and Reflections

Making Timely Iterations

With company priority on launching new features, this resulted in user research and improvements to the current experience being deprioritized. However, I kept a backlog of these design opportunities so that I would be able to work with the Product team on getting these added to the roadmap. For smaller improvements, I would work directly with Engineers to make the changes.

Staying Flexible

Despite getting Engineers involved early on in the process to understand any technical constraints, there would be times when they only discover obstacles building to the design spec as they start working on the implementation. In these situations, it’s important to be able to adapt designs.

I’ve enjoyed designing the Stocks product over the past few years and seeing it grow from an MVP to a full experience. However, design is a journey, and there are still many areas in the Stocks product that can continue to be improved.