Dah Sing Bank Power Screener and Power Tracker

Novice stock traders always struggle to find the proper timing to invest in a stocks. Buy early and with the slightest drop in price you will fear that you might have overpaid. Buy it late and one will fear that the lowest entry point might have already passed. In 2019 I was in charged with adding a stock screening and tracking function to their existing securities trading app “Securities Trading App+”

To solve the issue where user do not know when or what to invest in after opening a trading account, as well as to keep track of the stocks in their portfolio.

Objective

Background

One of the most asked questions for a beginner trader is what should I be investing in and when.

Finding the right stock and entering at a good timing is critical in making a profit. There are many different methods to value a company and to see if it’s an worthy investment, such as through company fundamentals or price history. After locating which stocks to buy, the question then shifts to when is a good timing to enter. “Buy Low, Sell High” have always been the golden rule but it’s always easier said than done.

 

With 3000 and counting stocks alone in the Hong Kong stock market, tracking them all is simply not a job anyone can handle.

Stocks investors require to monitor the performance of their portfolio as well as fluctuation in prices of stocks in their watchlist. Many existing trading platforms have the ability to set up notifications that gets triggered by criteria set by the user, so the user can focus on other tasks such as discovering new investment opportunities.

Competitor Study

After accessing the user needs and the goal of the project, I conducted a competitive analysis to understand how other banks and brokerage app had implemented a stock screening and tracking features to their app.

BOCHK

  • Combined screening and tracking function in one module

  • Screening presets for user to choose

  • No customisation option

同花順

  • Allow user to screen stocks that are related to latest hot topics

  • Screening criteria covers candlestick pattern, company fundamental as technical analysis

  • Offer certain level of technical analysis customisation

大智慧

  • Have screening templates that contain a collection of screen factors across different types of criteria

  • Does not have the stock tracking function

  • Contain the larger library of technical analysis tools for screening

Separation of 2 modules

The business requirement were to design a module that allow user to screen and track stocks. But after performing the competitor analysis I decided with the product owner that it would be best to keep the 2 functions as separate modules. The main reason behind this decision is because through customer interview we discovered that stock screening usually happen at the very beginning of the user journey to buy a stock where stock tracker can happen at all stages. A user might use the tracking function to identify a buying point, or to set criteria as a moment to set stocks in their portfolio. With these insights in mind we then focused on the overall flow of the 2 modules.

Prototyping & User Testing

Interactive prototypes using medium fidelity UIs were created for the 2 flows for ideas generation and user testing. We believed the order in which a user set up a screening or tracking preset is vital as the learning curve of similar modules are quite high. I experimented with users on single page as well as step-by-step disclosure and ultimate decided on single page disclosure. The main reason was I observed through usability testing that the strategy building process require a lot of back and forth modifications so it would be easier for user to change their settings on a single page. User flow diagram was used to discuss and present the screener and tracker flow to various stakeholders.

Templates to kickstart the process

As identified in the research phase, a large number of novice investors struggle to know what are factors that indicate a good stocks and a good timing to invest in a company. And through competitive analysis it is very obvious that competitors solve this problem by including screening templates that user can choose and modify accordingly. I proposed to include this function to the Power Screener with an additional education section where user can read the logic behind these provided templates. However the function end up being rejected and removed due to compliance issue related to stock suggestions.

Delivered Design

After prototyping and testing, I worked with the product owner and IT team to develop the remaining UI deliverables, user flow and support delivery. The Power Screener and Power Tracker was official launched on May 2021 and the user count have increased by over 80% in the past year.

Project Learnings

  1. Mobile help to narrow down necessary functions
    Initially product owner wanted to migrate all tracking technical indicator to mobile, moving only the most used criteria help to keep the user flow simple and easy to understand.

  2. Use step by step disclosure for complex functions
    Step by step disclosure help to break down complex task and educate user along the way.

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