Forge Pro serves experienced institutional traders investing in the private secondaries market, prioritizing real-time pricing and book data.
Background
Users
The primary user personas were "Trader" and "Portfolio Manager." We analyzed behavior with Heap tracking and validated hypotheses through user interviews.
Business
White-glove onboarding and transaction support were common. Forge aimed to boost in-app revenue by increasing engagement and IOI submissions.
Technical
Forge Pro is a web platform where IOI submissions feed into the internal broker console.
Team
Senior Product Designer (me), Product Manager, and Engineering team.
Understanding the user
During my time on Forge Pro I did user research projects on a continuous basis. The following project is one sample.
Trader’s journey workshop
Develop empathy for the Trader.
Find opportunities based on prioritizing the user.
Team building.
Goals:
1.5 hours
Miro
1 facilitator (Me)
2 Product managers
1 Designer, 1 Design manager
4 Engineers, 2 Engineering managers
Specs:
8 themes based on opportunities identified by the team: IOI nuance, simplification, faster price discoverability, notifications, customization, self-service, in-app negotiation
Outcome:
Market & Offerings Dashboard
Heap analytics suggested transactional behavior. Users would go directly to company pages and then bounce. Forge hoped to increase engagement from users by exposing activity and liquidity in the market.
Trending charts
Market trends exposed high level and significant activity in the market. The price gain/loss charts spoke to a significant portion of users who were motivated primarily by price changes.
Offerings
Offerings were intended to suggest liquidity in the market and to provide quickly actionable options for transaction. I created short and long term solutions to adapt the card layout copied from our consumer market to a table for institutional investors.
Responsive
As a web platform product users were visiting Forge Pro from a variety of devices. As such, I created responsive design specs.
Feature Enhancements
Users visited company pages for price information but left quickly. I iterated on the top sections of the page to address this.
“...how we formulate our bid is we see where the asks are, where the bids are, where the completed trades are...”
My Dashboard
Before this feature, the experience lacked personalization and actionability. The feature serves as a hub for users to track watchlist updates, manage trades, and view relevant market information
I created prototypes for interviews and gathered these user insights:
Avoiding scrolling is preferred.
Quick action is highly valued.
Dashboard customization is essential.
