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The engagement problem was defined upfront by the client as an OKR: increase interaction with the trading events feature by 30%, growing the active user base from 30,000 toward 40,000. Analysis of client-conducted user research sessions revealed why the feature was underperforming: users didn't recognize the section's purpose, couldn't quickly parse event relevance to their holdings, and had no clear next step once they did engage.

User Behavior Data:

• User testing pool: 8 RBC DI clients, 4 users of competing brokerages, 4 non-brokerage users across Canada

• Most common user journey post-login: Homepage → Holdings (66%) → Detailed Quote (38.6%) — confirming the homepage events widget was sitting directly in the highest-traffic path but being skipped entirely

Key Principles

• Surfaced personalized holdings data to make a generic feature feel individually relevant

• Used smart contextual text to close the gap between event awareness and investment action

• Designed several competing concepts to give user testing meaningful variable across various phases;

• Built for mobile and desktop simultaneously to ensure feature parity, not an afterthought adaptation

• Connected the feature across multiple platform touchpoints (homepage, Detailed Quote, Alerts) to create a coherent system rather than an isolated module

• Documented every edge case and zero state in the handoff spec so design intent survived into development

Client’s Pain Point: A feature on the bank’s website was often overlooked by users and underutilized.

Trader’s Pain Point: Investors did not find the personalized events applicable enough nor did it provide clear direction for the users. Some users express that its useful information if looked at but they often don’t because of the events’ location.

• ~30,000 unique interactions with the MIND module, just 0.10% of total platform users

• Of those who did engage, 59% clicked through to a Detailed Quote and 21% hit View All

• 75% of existing users rated the events information as very important or important; high perceived value, critically low visibility

• Only 56% said they were likely to take action after seeing the information, a direct signal that CTAs and content clarity needed work

Short Track: Added 9 new event types to the existing module with minimal design disruption, including volume averages, moving averages, price crossings, ratings changes, analyst reports, consensus data, and dividend dates

Long Track: Full experience rethink: added watchlist data alongside holdings, introduced organization and filtering, designed dynamic CTAs, added educational glossary elements, and built visualizations for all event types across all responsive breakpoints

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Dual Concept Design: Designed both the Events view and Calendar view approaches to present for user testing, giving the research team meaningful variables to test against

• Research Analysis: Reviewed client-recorded usability sessions and synthesized findings alongside the research team's recommendations to inform design direction; 75% of users preferred the Events view, which became the primary focus

• Module Design: Designed the full "Recent Events Driving Your Holdings" module with real-time updates, event tags, smart contextual text, account context, clickable company links, and event-specific CTAs

• Mobile & Responsive Design: Simultaneously designed desktop and mobile versions, creating adaptive components that maintained full feature parity across all breakpoints

• Phase Expansions: Worked in tandem with stakeholders and project managers to strategize phases and how to transition designs between each phase

• Dev Hand-off Documentation: Built a comprehensive Figma spec document covering all assets, spacing, interactions, edge cases, and zero states; led working sessions with the development team to ensure accurate implementation

All phases were designed, tested, and handed off for development. The redesigned homepage module was approved by the [CLIENT’S] Product Owner and Director. The project targeted a 30% engagement increase (from 30,000 to 40,000 active users), driven by a feature that previously had near-zero visibility with the platform's user base. I transitioned off the project at the tail end, with all design work completed and development underway.

Success Criteria:

• Success was defined by CTA click rate increases tracked through Google Analytics tagging: Set Alert, Add to Watchlist, Place a Trade

• 75% of existing users rated the events information as very important or important — high perceived value, critically low visibility

• Monthly client satisfaction surveys (LTR) were established as the ongoing measurement framework

• All objectives were tied directly to revenue impact: faster, more confident trade decisions

Successfully Delivered:

• Top action from events: "Get Quote" (1,055 clicks in a week) followed by the CTA (1,008)

• 75% of existing users rated the events information as very important or important

• Designs fully completed and approved by a Big 4 Canadian bank after three previous iterations were halted

• Successfully maintained design continuity and strategic direction across multiple project restarts and stakeholder changes

• Delivered a unified IA system covering the full scope of the bank's research platform, consolidating fragmented pages and tools into a single coherent framework

• All design work validated against and compliant with the bank's updated brand guidelines

• Project addressed three explicit business objectives: service discoverability, investor engagement, and contextual decision support