Societe Generale
Design and implementation of a complex trading application for a global investment bank. My team’s digital vision enabled the development of a user-centric trading platform accessed by a worldwide client base.
Role: Product design lead and Creative Director | Agency: Art Studio London
Challenge
Societe Generale’s corporate and investment banking division or CIB, offers it’s clients a bespoke suite of multi-asset financial tools and services. Running my own design agency – Art Studio London, I was instrumental in the design of their next generation interface and cross-platform multi-asset applications.
Our team was brought in to create a vision and strategy to bring CIB’s digital offering towards a next generation interface with the advent of broader capabilities and technology. This would allow a faster, more responsive layout with a robust platform interface all contained within a single page web application.
We needed to engineer a design system that was scalable and could work as a cross-platform experience putting the user at its heart.
Approach
Designing a new interface and pattern library would require us to worked closely with business analysts, product owners, developers and end users, all whilst feeding back into regular stakeholder steerco meetings. Another major consideration was to be sympathetic to the global brand. I would be responsible to present designs to the core team in monthly Paris meetings.
With a user-centric approach, our discovery phase allowed us to create the architecture for the full trading platform and the ways in which this could be applied from a technology and user experience standpoint. Whether it was a single page web application or a break-away widget on a traders mobile device, we used agile processes to produce rapid and dynamic prototypes to test technologies and interface design MVPs.
Application architecture
Liaising with users and product owners we mapped out the full application architecture and screen flows for this complex trading tool.
Wireframing and UX
We created low and high fidelity wireframes to present to the stakeholders and users as part of our agile design process.
Phased approach
With a bi-weekly sprint cycle for design and integration, we implemented each product line on our 70 week project roadmap.
Design and user testing
An app based approach enabled us to have a scalable product as the execution services expanded. Using Sketch and Zeplin enabled us to share and create pixel perfect designs which led to writing our own bespoke CSS and HTML.
Dynamic prototyping and MVPs
Rich interactive demos with dynamic front end and server side integration allowed us to create POC’s which gave us a posture to ensure that the vision was sustainable.
Atomic design principles enabled us to create a scalable and consistent pattern library.
Creating a UI design toolkit enabled us to quickly pull designs together that were consistent and reusable.
Result
The result was the launch of a new Html trading application - SG Markets. Art Studio London was instrumental in the creation and implementation of its transactional and execution services. Our vision and strategic input brought a host of business lines together to form a multi asset trading experience for desktop and mobile app.
In addition to this, we created the product visual identity which would go on to form a range of marketing material that was applied to video promos, advertising and printed brochures.
SG Markets would go on to win a host of accolades and is now used by thousands of customers trading millions of dollars per day.
Using a flexbox grid enabled us to have a responsive experience and resize the content according to a users device or browser window.
The team had to be clear on the terminology. We decided on a clear concise lexicon to be used by everyone when communicating our designs.
My team at Art Studio produced a series of promotional videos to showcase the new trading platform SG Markets. From storyboard to final production we worked closely with stakeholders to write a coherent narrative that would resonate with the end user.
“I have worked closely with Arthur for over ten years, developing the UX/UI for B2B trading platforms at both Nomura and Societe Generale. His ability to think strategically as well as work closely with product owners, developers and stakeholders in a pragmatic manner made him a much valued member of the team. He was able to take a brief and articulate client needs developing design systems that successfully supported the product development process.”
— Sohail Raja, Head of Execution Platforms & UK CDO at Societe Generale