Fennel App:
Invest in what you believe

Fennel, NYC. 2023

How did we started?

I worked with Fennel as a freelancer, and they already had a working app in the Apple Store when they reached me to improve their app.

I started interviewing their users and tested their app. The open conversation provided me with general information and feedback, allowing me to detect which moments users remembered as most frustrating and context about when they used the app and why.

Then, the team had specific flows that they feared were the weakest or most relevant at a business level; we focused on testing these with specific tasks. This allowed me to get to know different types of users and what type of use they gave or expected to give to the app, how it failed them, and how it helped them as investors.

With the results, I wrote a UX report, including priority criteria according to how blocking the issue was and a chapter with recommendations. After the team's review, several projects followed, in which we modified different parts of the experience.

Onboarding

Although the onboarding process was not tested, some users shared some of their experiences while in this process:

The onboarding process requests very sensitive financial information from the user in a very early stage. They don't know much about the product and they don't trust the app yet either. The barrier is very high in the very initial stage. I recommend offering the trial experience without this information, then if the user wants to buy a share or wants to subscribe we should request it.

A user comments that if it wasn't that he knew the Fennel team, he would not have spent the time required to go through the onboarding and would not have chosen to expose such personal information.
Observing bugs and errors during this onboarding process discourages them from continuing since they would expect the app to have more bugs and errors.
The subscription method generates doubts and mistrust. The fact that the subscription form is outside the App Store / Google Play can create distrust and make them feel out of control. A user told me that in the onboarding the subscription is signed and this is paid with transfers directly to his bank account. The confidence and control that a user gains when subscribing through the store are missing in this way.

To improve the onboarding experience the following changes were made:

The user could create an account to try the app for free, avoiding having to share financial information and compromise too soon.
In the free trial, the user could see how the app would look like with data, or design the UI to be more clear about the sections even if they are empty, so they can understand the value and the features Fennel will provide them with.

Also:

some portfolio fixes were made: some information was clarified, such as how volatile the portfolio was, how it changed compared to a past period, and how the data updates worked.
Increasing visibility and learnability of valuable features with coachmarks. Some features were more difficult to discover and some even needed some explanation due to how technical they were. We learned which of these features were highly used by heavy users so, we concluded it was worth including these quick tips for new users.

Search experience

Several issues were discovered, some of them were:

Without my direct indication (in the user testing) users couldn't discover the filters and table-customization page. For this, a sticky bar with the filters was created, if the user wanted to add multiple filters (or apply less relevant filters) they could access the filter page or, if wanting to apply one of the most used filters, they could access them through the shortcut in the sticky bar.
When seeing results, users found annoying and time-consuming that it wasn't possible to see more information about the companies from the listing view. They needed to visit each company profile. To compare companies the user has to go in and out of the profiles and try to remember the information they see. For this issue, I designed a results view where items could be expanded or collapsed while adding also a shortcut to open and close all results at once. The most basic information was prioritized, while secondary information could be seen when seeing the expanded view.

Company Profile

I found several issues to address, some of them were:

There is too much information in the profiles and it was difficult for them to get to any conclusion. Knowing what kind of information about the company was available took a lot of effort, they needed to scroll through the entire profile. For these, a menu was added and each section of the profile was approached separately to simplify readability.
It would be interesting to incorporate the date on which the company announces earnings since some users use this date as a reference to buy shares.
ESG Wheel: The information in the tooltip that opens when you click on the functions does not provide much information. What other details can be said about that feature?
It was very difficult to know if a score is positive or negative. That number is not clear and absolutely all users had to read the tooltip to understand that it is relative to the industry. The information on the card also does not help them understand how good or bad the company is rated and why is it different from others. For these, the comparison with the benchmark or the industry was clarified plus the answer of the category (for example, Carbon emissions are low, and that is uncommon in the industry)
To learn about the existing categories they have to click on each circle and read the name. The user cannot easily have a global idea of the categories and their score. Having to click on all of them implies a lot of effort. For these the cards were redesigned, they had a collapsed view with a summary of the answer and how they are compared to the industry, and then they could see more details when opened.
The type of graph does not allow to quickly visualize the most relevant factors for the user and to visualize in which it stands out, it does not facilitate the comparison. To fix this issue I used color to refer to the category of the topic, for example, all environmental topics are green.
The information provided had different formats depending on the card, which was very confusing, and took too much effort to understand what the result meant. All cards were changed to have the same format and keep consistency.

Portfolio Graphic Redesign

The performance graphic was redesigned to fix the following issues:

The color used in the graph is green or red depending on whether the last value went down or up compared to the starting point.
There is no time reference, what is the starting date? what is the finish date?
There is no data on when the last update was, once the portfolio is loaded the data is not updated again until the next load or refresh. On the other hand, if the market is closed, the data is from the last information received when it was active.
The control to change the period looks a little lost and goes unnoticed, even appearing to be part of the graph.
By clicking on the graph you see the only comparative reference, which is a line.