When you’re one of the largest hedge funds in the world by investment amount, you tend to develop best-in-breed practices that keep you ahead of the rest. In this case our client had taken it one step further by developing an in-house software solution for hedge fund administration. Seeing a potential revenue stream, they decided to explore packaging and selling these tools to other hedge funds and brokerage accounts.
The Challenge
Our users were middle and back-office managers. For them, maintaining context as they follow the trail of a trade-break is vital. With so much data and so many overlapping securities, trades, and contexts staying oriented is a challenge.
The Process
To help orient the user as they moved around the application from one group of functionalities and asset-classes to another we established a strong color and iconography language. This is critical to help set context without taking up valuable brain-processing time.
The Solution
Our initial explorations centered around a mouse-wheel controlled interface that cycled the user through different views of their data rapidly. This allowed the user to set filters and view data in many different ways. This was exactly the kind of divergent thinking the client was looking for to gain competitive differentiation as they took this new software to market.
