End-to-end design for a Derivatives Trade Blotter
TL;DR
Rio Tinto Group is an Anglo-Australian multinational corporation and the world’s second-largest metals and mining company, employing 45,000 people globally. The Commercial group focuses on maximizing product value and providing insights to drive value along the mine-to-market value chain.
Previously, Rio Tinto’s customer service officers and commercial trading desk manually processed quotes and orders for Aluminium LME (London Metals Exchange) derivative trades. This process was both time-consuming and tedious. The product team aimed to digitize this process by developing a new platform that would enable the generation and issuance of quotes, allow users to accept or cancel quotes, and create new orders based on target or market prices. Upon completion, the new platform was successfully rolled out to the customer service team and trading desk.
1. Project Management and Design Planning
Using Miro, I developed the design and research plan for the project. I outlined key activities for each step of the design process to clearly communicate expectations and deliverables to the project team.
A high level design plan I put together on Miro to track and surface progress
2. User Research - Interviews and Journey Mapping
In collaboration with the product manager, I identified three user types: Customer Support, Trader, and Back Office. These users were further segmented by region due to differing business processes and statutory frameworks. The three key regions were North America, Europe, and APAC.
Journey mapping and interviews were conducted with each user group to map the current process, identify pain points, and discover opportunities.
I also conducted interviews with managers from each user group to understand the overarching business goals for each department.
After mapping the regional user journeys, I identified commonalities and key steps across regions, leading to the creation of a generalized overarching user journey.
Affinity mapping helped to elicit goals, specific user pain points, information on current tools and workarounds, and user prioritization of issues and opportunities to address.
I created rough personas for the Customer Support Representative, Trader, and Back Office user.
Examples of workshop outputs. The workshop was hosted remotely at the height of Covid 2020 lockdowns in Singapore
3. Future User Journey and Platform Flows
Before delving into interaction design, I created storyboards of key scenarios involving our primary user personas to ensure their goals, needs, and potential broader frustrations or pain points were addressed in the platform and task flows.
Testing scenarios were developed based on initial design hypotheses. User feedback was structured around these hypotheses to determine if they were met or unmet. Given time constraints and the project's fast pace, I opted for scenario walk-throughs with users using the think-aloud method.
(1) A user and platform flow created from addressing prioritized pain points and opportunities; (2) The overall platform flow was broken down individual object flows (Quotes, Orders). This is an example of the “Request and Generate Quote” user flow., (3) IA diagram illustrating the flow of actions and resulting platform statuses.
4. Wireframing and User Testing
Using Miro, I wireframed key screens in the user flow for validation with stakeholders and user testing. These wireframes incorporated real-world data to elicit accurate responses. Specific scenarios, such as Generating a Quote and Creating an Order, were tested with users. Feedback was collected, analyzed, and used to propose fixes for the MVP.
Testing and scenarios were constructed based on the initial set of design hypotheses. User feedback could then be specifically structured along the design hypotheses to determine if the hypotheses were met or unmet. Due to time constraints and the fast-moving pace of the project, I chose to conduct scenario walk-throughs with users utilising the think-aloud method.
5. Final Design and Mobile Breakpoints
I worked closely with an external visual design resource to translate Miro wireframes into final visual designs, including breakpoints for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Collaborating with the Product Manager and a development team based in France, we successfully developed and shipped the MVP ordering and quote book system. At the project’s completion, customer service officials were using the platform to generate quotes and create orders for execution by the trading desk. Plans were also in place to extend the platform to another department—Precious Metals.
