Leading towards the first iteration of Bareksa Stocks experience
Investors have always been diversifying their investment portfolios, especially the ones with a higher risk: Trading or Investing in Stocks. Early in 2022, Based on the data Investor Saham di Indonesia, investors that have Mutual Fund product are 6.71 million (+111% YoY) and stock investors are 3.41 million (+101% YoY).
The exposure for digital investments products were also increasing. Hence the immense popularity were especially increasing amongst retail investors. Bareksa has 3.41 million users and a potential of 3.5 million that we can potentially acquire with the introduction of Stocks. The Product and Business team proposed this new vertical to be an integral part of the Bareksa’s Super App environment.
Personally, I think this is the project where I finally stood up as a more mature and Senior Product Designer as this my decision includes up to the directors and executives.
The challenge with that, however..
Local and international apps have already appear in the Indonesian market such as Robinhood, GoTrade, Stockbit, Ajaib, Pluang, to name a few. This determines the strategy in how Bareksa position themselves amongst the top players in the market.
Preview of the product (Available on Playstore and Appstore)
Understanding the personas
To better understand who I was designing for, I first needed clarity on who the users actually were. So then I and UX Researcher Lead developed a hypothetical persona representing our ideal target market. This creates a shared point of reference that anchored the product strategy.
Understanding the market
Building on the personas I developed, I collaborated closely with a Senior UX Researcher and Lead Product Manager to explore the user needs for both segments and answer our hypotheses. This helped shape the design decisions moving forward through:
Validated directly with both trader and retail personas. I gathered hands-on feedback through various prototype testing sessions, including insights from the CEO’s most trusted trading partners.
Partnered closely with the Marketing team to host an exclusive offline engagement event attended by potential users with a high net worth and substantial trading ticket sizes.
Synthesised the collective feedback into actionable product insights. I aligned all the findings against the prototype, translating them into data-backed rationale, and presenting a compelling case to stakeholders grounded in real user evidence.
Essentially, both traders and retail investors define a seamless trading experience through speed and efficiency, where every second can directly impact profitability. The more streamlined the flow, with fewer clicks and friction points, the better the experience feels.
Crafting the initial prototypes
As we presented the findings to the CEO, I was only instructed with one sentence.
"I want you to create the app that satisfies both set of users."
In retrospect, calling it a big challenge alone was a huge understatement. Traders and Retails are both polar opposites of each other. The former wants to have few clicks as possible to submit their order, while the latter prefer a really seamless and relaxing experience.
But my curiousness (and stubborness) got the better of me. I went on with the idea that there would be a middle ground between the two. The above research findings were reflected within the initial draft of the prototype.
How quickly things can change in a space of a few weeks (especially on 2nd to final iteration)
Achieving final prototype
On a weekly basis, I presented these design concepts to our Stakeholders and Upper Management team. After few months of iterations, failed experiments, and refining the approach here and there, I was ultimately able to align and gain confidence within the direction backed by our research and prototypes.
From the prototype shown on the right, I intentionally streamlined the flow to require no more than 6 clicks for users to create an order. This is due to removing any clutter from high net worth users to buy the stocks they need.
In scenarios where the stock was already saved within a watchlist or existing portfolio, the process could be reduced even further down to as few as 3 clicks.
Video preview signed off ordering flow
Remember I mentioned the trader persona? I also had them covered! I introduced a high-speed ordering flow that was originally designed for desktop only platforms. I thoughtfully adapted them into a mobile friendly experience.
This is built for high-intensity traders where every seconds matter, this journey supports their rapid execution to manage large amounts and react quickly to high-demand market opportunities.
Video preview signed off fast order flow
I also designed for users who prioritises on the fundamentals, thorough research, and market awareness – as mentioned before, this was tailored more on retail investors behaviour.
This experience enables them to explore market, stay informed on emerging trends, and build confidence through information discovery before making a final investment decision.
Video preview retail stock experience
Embedding DesignOps fundamentals to this project
Designing the end-to-end journey was one part of what I aimed to achieve in this project. I have also applied a DesignOps mindset and principles to make the system more scalable and maintainable.
Given the number of repeated screens across different user flows, I recognised the need for a more modular approach to design. This meant that when I need to make an update to any reusable screens, I could just apply once and it will automatically reflected across all relevant journeys.
Everything in the (almost) all of the journeys are a component, or at least an instance of a component
Supporting Development Lifecycle
UI Quality Assurance
Once the full end-to-end design was signed off, we moved forward to development process. I became more directly involved in supporting the development team, by collaborating closely through maintained Jira tickets to review the completed screens. I conducted Design QA across multiple operating systems and screen sizes, providing detailed asynchronous feedback to ensure the developed experience aligned closely with the intended design.
A preview of when we still had asynchronous UI reviews
After a few weeks, both the Stocks' Product Manager and I realised the process had become slow and operationally heavy. We wanted to reduce the constant back-and-forth cycles, so we shifted forward more structured synchronous review sessions. This allowed QA teams to demo the product live while we collaboratively identified which areas required refinements or further iterations.
We shared both OS screens side-by-side in our weekly meetings to gather feedbacks more swifty
Communicating Feedbacks to Stakeholders
At the time, all UI review activities were tracked directly within JIRA tickets. While it was functional for developers and product, it wasn’t particularly accessible for external stakeholders who were less familiar with navigating technical workflows.
That’s when my DesignOps instincts naturally came into play. I exported the review data from the board and reconstructed it into a cleaner Excel-based reporting format, which was something far more approachable for cross-functional and executive audiences.
The document eventually evolved into an executive-level progress report, giving leadership a clearer understanding of overall status, outstanding issues, and projected delivery timelines.
Me and my PM maintained this Issue and Progress Tracker presented to Stakeholders
Impact & Results
Stocks was launched in Q4 2023, right on schedule. Moving forward a few years, it has delivered measurable outcomes towards our initial prototypes and research, validating our strategic approach to balancing traders and retail investors.
$100k+
Annual revenues
50k+
Monthly trades
35%
Growth in Daily Active Users
4.3 → 4.5
App Store rating improvement
Reflection
I personally oversaw the file structure migration across every project and make sure every designer was properly equipped. Time by time, this workflow became the standard for the entire design organisation within du, with all members have slowly adopted and properly use this format.
Let’s get in touch 🤙🏼
Always open to conversations! Whether it's about Design Operations, Design Leadership, UX/UI Design, or just exchanging notes on what's working and what isn't. Looking to bring on a Product Design, want to collaborate, or just want to geek out? Let's have a chat
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