Harbinger: news watchdog for the finance industry
here's an overview
Harbinger reduces trading risk by providing you with the means to make the right calls when investing in stocks, FOREX and cryptocurrencies.
You would have access to market moving news streaming in real-time, as well as analysis tools for determining precedents of current events.
You decide the best course of action. Make informed decisions using Harbinger or get up to speed with economics using our free intuitive tools.
core problem
Harbinger was a bold venture into entrepreneurship, fintech and remote collaboration. Building a product, marketing it and launching it meant plenty of work in a short time frame. Having as main competitor a service offered by Bloomberg, communicating both the present product and what’s ahead was a must.
beneficiaries & target audience
The trading markets gather all sort of people looking for a win. From amateurs that left casinos behind for something that’s available on a mobile device, to seasoned professionals that got 20 years or more experience under their belts. Turns out the latter category was prone to making bold decisions based on solid intel and while not easy to find, they proved a very reliable resource to stabilize and further grow the product.
roles & responsibilities
Aligning stakeholders, prioritizing features to launch a solid MVP on schedule, researching and figuring out the proper messaging to reach a decent beachhead were
Teamed with the two founders, the CMO and the CTO and facilitated the creation of the product strategy, handled the user experience design of the product and the marketing website, a part of the copywriting and the design of the interface for both.
- Research – to inform the design strategy of the product
- Workshop facilitation – to surface the strategy of the product and the brand character
- User Flows – to clarify the journey of the users before and during the interaction with the service
- Information Architecture – to present relevant information to the user at the right time
- Sketching – to align stakeholders and clarify the scope of development
- Wireframing – to further align stakeholder’s views and cover key details
- User Interface design – to offer a branded visual expression to the service we designed
- Prototyping – to further validate flow, available functionality and necessary information
scope & constraints
Here’s what we had on the radar at the beginning of our collaboration:
- come up with a decent strategy for positioning the product
- design an as simple as possible MVE without sacrificing value
- design the marketing website for the product
process
plan
During the first week I wanted to connect with the product through the stakeholders: representatives from the marketing, sales, development and support teams.
Since we I was dealing with a big piece of software I had to get some quick wins and be as agile as possible while at it. We agreed that we would handle in the first month the main 3 priorities we agreed upon, use wireframes as main deliverables and then come up with a style guide that would inform the development as we continue with the rest of the application, with weekly sprints.
I used UXPin to hold all the necessary assets: research results, mindmaps, research results, wireframes and final design assets. It allowed for transparent collaboration and a decent manner to manage the handover to the development team.
Later on I turned to Frontify to hold the specifications for the style guide. Back then it was a magic, brand and atomic design oriented tool.
execution
I still long for a thriller starring a designer as the main character. The truth is that design can be damn boring for spectators. While we may get a kick out of finding the little details that make somebody’s daily task less of a hassle, reaching it might not always Archimedes like moments of truth.
Meeting every Thursday allowed us to make sure we’re on the same
page, while email and Skype managed to cover day to day communication.
Each week was a cycle that followed these steps:
- gather data about the next section/page that needs care and prioritize main items to adjust
- manual sketch initial ideas to clear the mental slate
- do research to look for how others deal with similar problems
- build
an interactive proposal that covers the adjustments making sure you
develop a simple and coherent visual and interaction language - present it in the weekly meeting and receive feedback
- discuss the finer points of the issues you encountered or foresee when it comes to technical implementation and use
- suggest alternatives and plan for adjustments
A weekly loop that made sure we deliver consistently and feed the pre-planned development efforts in a timely manner.
Lack of access to the end users always hinders the efforts to plan or validate reliable solutions. So I tried to involve all the hands available on deck into exploring possibilities, sharing feedback and validating. Statistically, more perspectives allow you to get closer to the user’s pool.
closing
Come October the app was well under development and our collaboration would come to a much welcomed end. The new version was launched (to my knowledge) in early 2016 and continues to evolve way beyond what we all envisioned. You can peek at the current status and features if you visit: https://carflow.pro/en/features/.
