Shipped | Fintech | iOS | UXR | PM

Planned and created Fundgo, a South Korea’s first iOS/Android app service for private equity funds. I digitized the offline trading system.

Time
4 Months (Sep - Dec 2021)
Team
Lead UX designer worked in a team of 6, including designers and financial specialists
Tools
Figma, Slack
Adobe XD
Notion
Task
Brainstorm
Storyboard
Wireframe
Prototype
UI Design

The Challenge

Converting the non-digital investment process to a digital product

Ulternative Asset Management serviced private equity fund trading only in person, which constrained the space-time. The company wanted to digitalize the service so that more customers could trade anytime, anywhere, on mobile devices. The app had to contain clear guidelines to increase customer understanding.

Also, digitalizing offline finance services involved legal problems and financial expertise. We had to transfer paperwork into mobile devices, which often contained hundreds of pages.

The fact that the offline process heavily depended on private bankers’ work was another challenge. The online service had to automatically collect and organize customer data precisely so that private bankers could execute requested tradings.

Given the situation, our team had to solve a tricky question: how do we provide massive offline banking services concisely and communicatively, increasing users’ involvement?

The Solution

Summarized information

Fundgo provides summarized information about the company’s private equity funds.

Unlike traditional private equity funds, Fundgo expands the trading experience into a digital environment and enables customers to access the service whenever and wherever they want.

Clear guidelines with visual language

For users’ comprehension, each function has clear steps with specific guidelines and auto-filled answers to decrease confusion. The app also shows minimized information since unnecessary texts might cause distraction.

Colors follow traditional finance-related design systems, such as red and blue each representing increase and decrease. With this visual language, comprehension becomes easier.

Aiming for Both Usability and Marketing

Selecting home screen elements mattered to usability and marketing. Our team prioritized the user-friendly features and the company’s promotions, balancing each component’s exposure.

The Fundgo app provides each user with the ongoing status of participated funds on the home screen. This display not only satisfies the user’s convenience to check their funds but also helps build the company’s credibility.

Reflection

User flow and IA vs. Storyboard

As the app contained various information, making a user flow chart before an information architecture was significant. The iteration of user flow allowed our team to find missing functions; the more we did, the more we understood the project.

I assumed that IA and user flow would be enough for developers to get the function—however, they needed more specific guides. I experience how crucial it is to create a storyboard before executing designs for faster development. Also, considering each element’s restriction and rules in wireframing step helps draw storyboards efficiently.

Understanding the post-launching workflow

The experience made me realize that UX is not only about launching the service but also comprehending the workflow after the launch. I had to talk to private bankers for smooth user flow and design an admin page to let them input the values.

I noticed the importance of the admin page in the middle of the process—maybe next time, I will design the admin page and wireframe simultaneously.