Making complex portfolios legible for non-technical investors
User research for a SaaS portfolio management tool spanning stocks, crypto and forex, designed so retail investors without a financial background could use it confidently.
The problem
Fudo's portfolio management tool targeted retail investors across stocks, crypto and forex, asset classes with genuinely complex, fast-moving data. The interface needed to serve confident traders and complete beginners at once, without dumbing down the data or overwhelming a non-technical user.
My role
I led user research guiding both design and development inside a 10-person cross-functional team, and used research and stakeholder feedback to streamline how findings were documented and communicated across the team.
Research & insights
I conducted usability testing with 20 participants and analyzed 100+ data points to understand exactly where non-technical users lost confidence in the interface, generating insights that fed directly into both design decisions and engineering priorities.
Process
Findings were translated into a research-informed design system, standardizing components across the product to keep the developer handoff clean and consistent as the team shipped quickly.
The solution
An intuitive interface for non-technical investors, backed by a consistent design system that gave engineering a single, reliable source of truth for every component.
Impact
Adoption rose 65% and user satisfaction 25%. Streamlined research documentation and communication cut developer build time by 40%, and the new design system achieved 100% UI consistency across the product.
Reflection
This was an early lesson in how much a design system saves once research findings need to scale past a single screen. Consistency became a research deliverable, not just a visual one. If I revisited one decision, it would be building the component library before the first usability round, not after. We were already translating the same findings into ad hoc fixes for weeks before the system existed to hold them.