Portfolia Investing App

Client

Portfolia is an investment collective in California for business-minded women and minorities seeking venture communities and resources to invest.

Problem to Solve

Currently, Portfolia members can only connect in person or on multiple social media platforms. There is also no group announcement or investment hub for the members to get updates between meetings.

Goal Statement

Creating the Portfolia app will let users connect with fellow members, view upcoming events, and track investments. This will improve the ease of staying involved and informed for active members through one single platform. We will measure the effectiveness by analyzing the number of recurring visits to the app and the duration of the visits.

Research

To understand the problems and start gathering data to solve them, I started by trying to fully understand the Portfolia group and community. I had to understand the target demographic, current functions, and where it fits into the overall finance and investment world.

Ideation & Design

After brainstorming some solutions, I started grouping htem into buckets that might solve the user needs and painpoints. From there I used the solutions to build the app architecture, and then tested it with a few users flows that had different tasks.

Wireframe

Charlene’s user flow was used to help inform some isolated task wireframes.

The app only focused on solving the task of browsing for a specific investment and funding. This allowed for more layout ideation and focusing on the app’s usability before building out to every page.

Prototype

The first prototype focused on the user’s journey from opening the app to searching for a specific share called “Cloudflare” and buying it.

User Testing

Taking the first prototype, I interviewed more users to see what was working well or what was causing confusion. I found three user problems and brainstormed possible solutions to help fix the experience.

Revisions

The revised prototype makes it easier for the user to access investments by adding additional navigation points. The search bar is also clearer and sticky at the top of the page. Lastly, the app’s color is not so monochromatic and now incorporates traditional red and green colors to indicate whether a stock is going up or down.

Conclusion

Roadblocks

Every project comes with roadblocks. For this one, I found it challenging to contact Portfolia members or generally similar interview candidates for research.

There was also the challenge of time. The deadline was accelerated, which led to the decision to create the one-task prototype for testing and pitching, which allowed me to use my time wisely while still presenting a well-designed user experience.

Successes

The one-task Portfolia app was a success! Users found the issues from the initial prototype to be well resolved and were able to complete the task easily. The client was happy with the function and direction, so the app is on its way to being built out.

If you want to check out the full Figma file, here is the viewing link: Portfolia App in Figma