Portfolio Rebalancing

EN

Nelogica

Understanding the Challenge

This case involved developing a feature for Nelogica’s Home Broker, an application for analyzing and trading assets on the stock exchange. It’s sold as a B2B product to other companies, such as partners like Nubank, C6 Bank, Sicoob, and Sicredi. Therefore, the feature needed to be developed with both the main product and the companies that use it in mind, along with their users.

The challenge began with discussions between myself, the UX leader at Nelogica at the time (Renan Paz), and the Web development leader. In these discussions, we sought to understand user behavior within the application and portfolio management.

In our initial conversations, we observed that users accessed the platform to learn more about trading assets in the financial market, conduct asset studies, and add indicators. However, over time, they tended to access the platform less frequently. This was mainly due to the behavior of investors in the financial market who, as they learned about the market, naturally explored tools and functionalities and defined their investment goals. Once they had these goals defined, they would use a third-party platform or tool.

After these discussions, I began to delve deeper into the research and problem exploration process. I chose to use the Double Diamond, a design process, which I’ll outline the stages of below.

Discover

In the first stage, I began conducting research on the internet about the stock market, portfolio management, and how to create an investment goal. Access to application users was not possible due to the company’s data research and usage culture. However, I was able to find plenty of information on the subject online.

With the discovery stage defined, I understood that long-term investors go through the portfolio rebalancing process. In simple terms, this means that when investors see that their portfolio is not following their plan, they rebalance it. To explain further, let’s consider an example: Imagine you have stocks of Petrobras, Vivo, and Positivo in your portfolio, and for some reason, you want to decrease your position in Petrobras. In this case, you would decrease the number of Petrobras stocks you own and increase the number of Vivo and Positivo stocks. This process is called portfolio rebalancing.

With these definitions in mind, I delved into competitor analysis to understand the solutions available in the market and how we could propose a solution with greater value. In my research on the internet, I came across three tools: spreadsheets, StatusInvest, and Smarttinvest.

These three competitors offer the possibility of tracking your investment portfolio; however, they each have their own unique features. In the case of spreadsheets, you can customize it completely, but you need to have knowledge of the tool, and if you make any trades in your broker platform, you’ll need to update the information in the spreadsheet as well. StatusInvest provides news sources and allows you to view updated stock prices, requiring you to only add the assets manually. However, it’s still all manual input. A differentiated platform I found and considered relevant was SmarttInvest, which includes portfolio tracking and management, as well as portfolio rebalancing that can be done within the platform itself. However, you can only integrate it with certain broker platforms, which is not the case with Nelogica’s product. Therefore, investors would need to manually integrate the information.

Definition

After the discovery stage, I contacted the UX leader and the development leader to discuss the tool. I gathered the information I found and we talked about the possibility of developing the Portfolio Rebalancing feature. However, it was clear that we would need more data. This initial conversation was more about keeping both of them updated on the progress and gathering data that could be relevant for the next stages.

In our discussions, I realized that we would need a simple interface that should be placed in another location within the application. This is because the initial screen already contained many tools and could confuse users even more. Additionally, it would be necessary to have graphs for investors to conduct their analyses and compare their current portfolio with their investment goal.

Development

After aligning with leadership, I began to think about the functionalities that should be present in this first version.

To better organize my thoughts and illustrate, I created a flowchart of the user’s initial screen.

In this flowchart, I defined that the initial functionalities would be the possibility for the user to rebalance their assets, disable any asset if they do not want it to be included in their portfolio, edit, and invest balance. At the request of the development leader, the user could invest a preferred balance, for example, if the user had R$1000 available, the tool would distribute this amount among their assets, considering their investment goal.

After creating the flow for the initial screen, I began to outline the step-by-step process for users who enter the tool for the first time, and it is necessary to configure their investment goal.

In this second flowchart, the idea is for the user to go through a step-by-step process where they would first export their assets (if they had already purchased any in the Home Broker). After the configuration, they would be able to rebalance their assets and go to the initial screen.

With these flows drawn, I moved on to designing the wireframes to conceptualize the interface and be able to discuss with the teams interested in the project. When creating the sketches, I focused on having high-quality wireframes so that I could test various versions of the interface.

And it was also necessary to design wireframes for the mobile version:

With these wireframes designed, I considered the functionalities for comparing assets and the possibility for users to have graphs, so several tests were conducted.

After creating the flowchart and wireframes, I met with the developers and the UX leader to present the ideas and choose the final version of the interface. Through long discussions and adjustments to the interface for technical feasibility, we arrived at this version:

With the objectives defined and expectations managed, I then began the final stage of this project, which is creating high-quality interface designs.

Deliver

During this stage, the interfaces of the feature were designed step by step, with weekly deliveries. Throughout this process, developers were included for occasional discussions to ensure their needs were being met, address any doubts regarding the designs, and accommodate any necessary changes.

Below are some screenshots of the feature in its final version:

And in parallel, the mobile version was created, following best practices with Mobile First:

After the delivery stage, the project was successfully developed and is currently being used by Home Broker users. The next steps would involve monitoring to understand the impact and collect insights from users.

Conclusion

After the development of the Portfolio Rebalancing feature, it was possible to meet the expectations of the UX and development leaders, as well as ensure that users had a more complete and integrated experience within the Home Broker. Through the use of the Double Diamond process, it was possible to explore and better understand the problem and user needs, generating valuable insights for the development of the solution. Continuous monitoring and collaboration with developers were essential for creating a viable solution with significant added value for users.

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