Vendors Share UX Best Practices

The first lesson a financial firm should learn when it comes to improving its user experience (UX) is one of empathy.

That's what Jon Tobey, global head of user experience at technology consulting firm Lab49, says is the most important thing to consider when designing products and applications.

"Put yourself in their position and understand what they're trying to do and what their frustrations might be and understand what their goals are," Tobey says. "You don't want to roll out an application that is focused on how you work, or what record information you want your clients to give you. You have to actually understand what your clients want to do, and you have to empathize with them. You have to understand how much time they have to work with a particular application—what they're trying to do, what their goals are. And you have to constantly think about what their experience is, rather than what you want their experience to be."

Beauty is Only Skin Deep

"It's about thinking about the behavior you're enabling your clients, improving their efficiency and giving them back time in their day to do other things,” Jon Tobey, Lab49

For a feature in the upcoming July issue, Waters spoke with three of the largest financial firms on the buy and sell side about steps they are taking to improve upon their user experience. In addition to reaching out to end users, Waters also spoke to several vendors about areas they feel firms are still lacking when it comes to UX.

Tobey says UX that is focused on simply looking pretty is no longer a differentiator; it's what customers expect. For firms to really separate themselves from the pack, they need to focus more on improving behavior and workflows and making processes more efficient, according to Toby.

"It's about thinking about the behavior you're enabling for your clients, improving their efficiency and giving them back time in their day to do other things. That's really where the experience for the user experience is," Tobey says. "It's not just how it looks. Good design is about how it works and how you unlock or enable efficiency. Make sure that you're minimizing errors and de-risking information entry and focus on the end-to-end experience and the workflow as the people go through that."

Bill Neuman, Eze Software Group's managing director of product management, echoed similar sentiments. Too many firms focus on the cosmetics of UX, Neuman says, and while it's nice to have an app people want to use because it's visually appealing, there are more important issues to handle.

"There needs to be some substance behind UX," Neuman says. "The workflow that the user is engaging in day-over-day needs to be clear. They need to be transparent in terms of the behavior being understandable, and they need to be efficient. If those things don't exist, then there will be a lot of frustration among the user base."

Keep it Simple

Brian Mullane, head of product management at Redi, uses the old adage "Less is more."

He calls it a corny catchphrase, but says it rings true when it comes to UX. Mullane uses Instagram as an example. The reason people are on it all the time, he says, is because it's easy to use, clean and extremely stable.

"I think if I were to give advice, I would say focus on simplicity, responsiveness and don't try to cram everything into one space," Mullane says. "Things should be functional. Don't just try to keep padding stuff without adding any real value."

Too often, Mullane says, firms put too much on the screen, and education and clarity aren't emphasized enough. Mullane says that if you need to create a user guide for customers you've failed. A product should be easy enough to pick up and learn.

Mullane uses Redi's Spreadtrader, part of the RediPlus execution management system (EMS), as an example. It has several toolkits that explain what buttons do if the user hovers over them. There are also indicators that tell the user if the spread is marketable.

"It seems like a very basic thing, but in the financial world, at least in the trading industry, that's been a challenge over the years," Mullane says. "I would say, I don't think these are groundbreaking things. I think they are not done well enough in our industry."

Bottom Line

Vendors recommend firms focus more on workflows and processes as opposed to the user interfaces and try to keep their UX as simple as possible to not overwhelm users.