EMS Redesign: Ticket Configure Mode
2019 Waters Ranking: Best Execution Management System
Led a multi-year redesign of an industry leading Execution Management System (EMS) resulting in the Buy-Side’s most used EMS and the 2019 Waters Ranking: Best Execution Management System.
Background: In 2012 the business managers believed their ability to increase usage and adoption of the product had plateaued due to the product's user interface, which was described during user research as "clunky," "legacy" and "really complicated." The research showed that users wanted a simpler, more modern system that would be adaptable, easy to configure, and tailorable to their preferences.
The project kicked-off by observing and interviewing equity traders at their desks in order to better understand their existing workflows, look for opportunities, and direct the redesign effort. The initial round of research included 18 traders across 15 firms and the findings were distilled down to 8 key themes. Out of that an overarching concept emerged that improved configurability was key. Users wanted full control over their workspaces and to feel a ‘sense of mastery’ over the tool.
Highlighted Feature: Ticket Configure Mode
The ability for users to quickly and easily configure their trading tickets has been one of the biggest drivers of adoption for the redesigned EMS.
Buy-side traders often start their careers at sell-side firms where they learn to trade on bespoke trading software. As such each trader becomes accustomed to the particular UI that they originally learn to use. Buy-side firms are often smaller organizations that provide third party tools to their traders, so the ability for an EMS to be highly configurable and adaptable to a given user's preferences is a key feature that ended-up driving adoption of this new system. However perhaps not surprisingly traders often don't have patience to explore system Settings, so having those features be intuitive and discoverable was also key.
User research was conducted, for example, to determine what sequence to use for the key fields that define an order: security, side, quantity, etc... The users' responses varied to an extent that we designed a "Configure" mode to allow users to easily change the sequence of fields with a simple click of the mouse.
Wireframe: New ticket in Route mode.
Wireframe: Right-click menus on fields add shortcuts to hide the field or change its settings.
Wireframe: Inline configure mode with drag-n-drop affordances on each field label to emphasize the new, and potentially unexpected, field rearrangement capability.
Wireframe: Configure mode also exposed detailed field settings.
Wireframe: Ticket sections could easily be toggled on/off through the Options menu.
Visual Mockup: New ticket could be configured to have limited information, like this Order ticket.
Visual Mockup: Or tickets could be configured to have more information, like this Route ticket.
Visual Mockup: The intuitive Configure Mode was much loved by users.
Visual Mockup: Field and column specific settings could be accessed directly.
Visual Mockup: Additional settings were deep-linked to from controls to afford further configuration.
Visual Mockup: Novel interaction designs such as this 'spinner' widget, which present live exchange data and calculated values to enable entry of the Quantity and Price fields efficiently via either the keyboard or mouse.
Outcome: This new EMS was very well received by the trading community and in 2019 for the first time it went on to win the Waters Ranking: Best Execution Management System award, beating out a fiercely competitive field including a previously dominant five time winner.
