TD Ameritrade

Responsive | Investing | Enterprise

As mobile traffic continued to grow, TD Ameritrade saw an opportunity to rethink its flagship investing platform for long-term investors.

The goal was to create a simpler, mobile-first experience while modernizing an aging technology stack. This was more than a responsive redesign—it was an opportunity to rethink how individual investors managed their finances across devices.

My role

I helped lead the user experience for TD Ameritrade's mobile-first investing platform from its early development through launch.

Individual Contributor | 2016–2017

I joined the digital transformation initiative as an individual contributor, helping establish the experience for long-term investors.

Design Manager | 2017-2022

I moved into design management in 2017, hiring, mentoring, and leading a team of five designers across two product teams. Alongside product and engineering, I helped shape product direction, establish research and design practices, and deliver a consistent experience across the platform.

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

duration and output
2016 - 2022
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

Year-over-year growth

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.

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
Understanding long-term investors

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

We interviewed 12 investors to understand how they monitored their portfolios, evaluated opportunities, and made investment decisions.

The research revealed a consistent need: investors wanted to understand what was happening with their money without navigating complex financial information.

We synthesized these findings into a shared understanding of customer needs, helping the team prioritize clarity, portfolio visibility, and actionable information.

Problem discovery
Research Synthesis

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

Workshop
Aligning the team around solutions

I facilitated a cross-functional design studio to translate research findings into potential solutions.

Through time-boxed sketching, group discussion, and dot-voting, I guided the team in exploring competing ideas, evaluating trade-offs, and building consensus around a shared direction.

Agile UX
Scaling design across teams

Beyond redesigning the investing experience, a significant part of my role was building the practices and processes that allowed design to scale.

I introduced structured design sprints, established ways for product and engineering teams to collaborate with design, and helped manage the adoption of new design systems while addressing accumulated design debt.

These efforts helped the team work more consistently as the platform grew and additional teams contributed to the experience.

core features
"How am I doing?"

Main designer: Hoi Kei Ng

Long-term investors need to understand their financial position quickly and confidently.

We designed the dashboard to bring account balances, portfolio performance, holdings, and relevant market information into a single view.

The experience gives customers a clear starting point, helping them assess their investments at a glance and investigate further when needed.

addressing unmet needs

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

Research revealed that approximately 30% of customers interviewed used spreadsheets to track and analyze their holdings.

We introduced portfolio allocation visualizations that made it easier to understand investments across individual holdings and sectors.

By bringing this information directly into the platform, we reduced the need for customers to calculate and interpret their portfolio allocations independently.

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

Investment decisions require customers to evaluate information from multiple sources, including market performance, company fundamentals, and analyst perspectives.

We organized this information into a cohesive research experience, combining financial data with visualizations to help investors interpret the numbers and make more informed decisions.

The experience also retained customer preferences, making it easier to return to their research without starting over.

Core FEatures
Trade from Any Page

Investors often move between research and trading as they evaluate opportunities.

We introduced a persistent trading panel that allowed customers to place trades without leaving the information they were reviewing.

This supported a more fluid experience across research and transactions.

68% of visitors with access to the panel used it to trade.

Challenges & Outcome

Navigating complexity
The platform evolved alongside a growing product and design organization. Multiple product managers brought different priorities, while the design system changed twice during development.

As a design manager, I helped scale the team, establish design and research practices, and support consistency across an increasingly complex product.

Outcome
The redesigned platform launched to mobile traffic in February 2018.

Between May 2019 and May 2020, the platform reached 669,000 unique accounts, with 64% year-over-year account growth and 475% growth in trading activity.

These results demonstrated strong adoption of the new experience, which brought together portfolio monitoring, investment research, and trading within a responsive platform.

What I'd do differently
Our initial focus was on foundational investing experiences: monitoring portfolios, researching investments, trading, and moving money.

In retrospect, we should have invested more in onboarding and communicating the changes to existing customers. Many customers didn't realize they were using an early version of the redesigned platform.

The experience reinforced the importance of treating product adoption and customer communication as part of the design challenge—not simply activities that follow launch.

Open to hearing about new opportunities
Get in touch via LinkedIn

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