TD Ameritrade

Responsive | Investing | Enterprise

With traffic to the site on mobile increasing year after year, the opportunity to redesign TD Ameritrade's flagship long-term investor product was ideal.

The target audience was long-term investors who were interested in a simpler experience.

In addition, TD Ameritrade’s technology stack had grown outdated. The opportunity was to redesign the product, using modern technology and design conventions.

My role

I’m the product design manager for TD Ameritrade’s mobile-first investing platform aimed at long-term investors. I’ve led the user experience from inception to launch.

Individual Contributor 2016-2017
I was an individual contributor when this digital transformation initiative began in 2016.

Team Manager 2017-Present
In 2017, I pivoted to team manager, hiring and training new designers to use lean UX as part of a cross-functional team; as well as managing the design and research operations. I currently manage a team of 5 designers across two product teams

Responsibilities
Individual contributor
Team manager: player/coach
Design & research operations

duration and output
2016 - present / ~3 years
Responsive web site

Team
2-4 product managers
product design manager (me)
2-4 designers
20+ engineers
4 quality assurance

Key results

669k

64%

64k

475%

$58m

Unique accounts

Growth YOY 

Trades per day

Growth YOY

Trading Revenue

Stats based on analytics from May 2019 to May 2020. Digital NAS for the platform rose 22% from 52 to 63 during the same time period.

discovery & framing
UX Design Sprints

One of the goals of the project was to improve the design and development process.

UX design sprints were used to move quickly and produce designs for a continuous delivery development environment. 

Each UX sprint contains the basics of the design process: discovery, ideation, prototype or product walkthrough, and usability testing.

Agile UX
The design process for scale

As the product grew, outside teams and vendors were asked to develop functionality for the new platform. I created an intake process and method to work with outside teams. To educate our partners, I became an evangelist for agile UX within TD Ameritrade.

Design system & design debt

The TD Ameritrade design system went through its own trajectory of growth and was redesigned twice. 

The design system gave us a way to standardize and produce high-fidelity designs quickly; it also enforced constraints and has the advantage of providing a checkpoint with the wider team before introducing new patterns.

Scalability

Implementing a New Design System

Preparation
- Bi-weekly research with the new design patterns
- Accessibility analysis
- Coordination with design system team

Paying down design debt
- Create a project plan
- Coordinate with engineers and product
- Atomic-level refactor
- Template-level refactor

Problem statement

How do we create an investment product that satisfies existing customers and also attracts new ones?

Create a product that is simple and uses visuals to explain concepts

Problem discovery
Long-term investing persona

“I need a simple way to find out what is impacting -- or will impact -- my investments so I can take action if needed.”

We conducted exploratory interviews with 12 investors to understand the saving and investment challenges faced by our current customers create a long-term investor persona.

Problem discovery
Research Synthesis

Synthesis of research interviews enabled the team a deeper dive into the problems and opportunities to serve investors.

Workshop
Design studio

Time-boxed sketching session with the full team to go far and wide in generating ideas

Dot-voting is used to determine which ideas will provide value to customers

The facilitator asks each participant to discuss why they voted to better understand the design rationale for each solution

core features
"How am I doing?"

Main designer: Hoi Kei Ng

The dashboard provides a quick overview of the most important information to long-term investors: 

• overall balance
• balance over time
• cash available for trading
• positions data
• market news

Long-term investors like to be able to check-in and quickly assess what in their portfolio is moving, and whether or not they need to take action. The dashboard provides a jumping-off point to go deeper.

addressing unmet needs

"I want to understand my portfolio overall to make better decisions for my future"

During our regular user research sessions, about 30% of customers described using spreadsheets to track their holdings:

• To track performance over time
• To inform rebalancing decisions by viewing overall allocations and sector breakdowns
  

Customer quote:

“Very nice - and in my opinion long overdue - update allowing users to view the allocations and sectors breakdown of our portfolios. It saves me a lot of time having to calculate it myself in an excel spreadsheet”

core features

"Should I buy or sell?"

Main designer: Ebenezer Gavieres

Long-term investors do research before investing. They rely on a variety of information about the investment - a unique blend of what is important to them.

The Stock Quote Detail page is designed to provide a mix of data points and data visualizations to help customers understand the numbers.

Customer preferences are saved as they interact with the interface:

• chart settings
• modules open/close state on mobile
• table sort order

This saves customers time and rework as they move through the product and also when they return at a later date. Everything they interactive with during their previous session has been retained.

A/B Testing
Reducing Calls to Customer Service

Our flagship website had a known issue with the transfer terminology - customers occasionally moved money in the wrong direction. 

First-click testing and a set of 10 task-based questions were used to determine the best option of the three.

Core FEatures
Trade from Any Page

Customers on large breakpoints want to take advantage of the real estate by multi-tasking while they make investment decisions.

Investors might want to look at a chart, analyst report, or news and then place a trade:

• 68% of visitors with access to the panel use it to trade

Challenges & Outcome

Challenges
The product had multiple product managers with different visions. We scaled the product and the design team at the same time. The design system changed twice while the product was being developed, contributing to design debt.

outcome
The product went live to mobile traffic in February 2018.

From February 2018 to August 2020 the new product experience generated solid results, suggesting that customers trusted the new mobile experience for monitoring and taking action on their investment ideas.

The product was slated to replace the flagship website in 2018, and the timeline was accelerated. And then TD Ameritrade was purchased by Schwab and development decelerated.

Missed opportunities
The redesign only focused on foundational transaction experiences such as monitoring, trading, and moving money. We missed an opportunity to provide robust onboarding. Due to our lack of communication, many customers did not know they were using an MVP when it first rolled out.

Open to hearing about new opportunities
Get in touch via LinkedIn

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