Problem
Most research efforts focused on testing new features for the trading platform, but we lacked a centralized database of insights to guide ongoing improvements.
Solution
To bridge this gap, I launched research trading sessions – live sessions where traders of different experience levels used our platform while sharing their thoughts and actions. This gave us invaluable insights into usability challenges, trading behaviors, and the features traders actually rely on.
To make the process smooth, I:
1. Planning the sessions
Before each session, I determined:
Planning the session
2. Running the sessions
Most sessions were conducted remotely via Google Meet, with recordings for later reference. I invited Product Designers and the Product Owner/Product Manager responsible for the area being tested.
The typical session structure:
Fragment of trading session
3. Documentation and insights management
At first, I documented insights in a dedicated Slack channel, where I posted a session summary, added key insights in the thread and suggested potential solutions. When technical bugs popped up, I forwarded them to the relevant development team and followed up on their resolution.
But as the number of sessions grew, it became difficult to track insights efficiently in Slack. To solve this, I moved the insights database to Coda, which significantly improved usability making it easier to:
Centralized insights database