If someone has to look across several screens to understand what they own, it can be difficult to tell whether they are seeing the complete picture. The way amounts are displayed matters as well, particularly when a total includes a loan and it is not clear how that affects the value shown. During a client meeting, the relationship manager then has to spend time explaining how to read the screen.
When I worked on the Bitcoin Suisse investment platform, clients could not see all their holdings in one place. The information was spread across vault, staking and portfolio screens, which made it difficult to get a complete overview of what they owned.
There were also problems with how the values were displayed. Crypto amounts had long strings of decimals, and clients with an active loan could see a negative total that made it look as though they owed more than they owned. Relationship managers had to help explain these figures during client conversations.
We gathered the questions and feature requests that relationship managers were receiving, and looked at them alongside analytics, interviews and an internal survey. Clients were having difficulty finding their full holdings, comparing performance and understanding why their total had changed.
There are two things to consider here: whether the information is available, and whether someone can understand it without knowing how the product is organised. A client may be able to find each individual account and still struggle to work out the overall total. Adding another explanation to the screen does not necessarily help if they still have to move between sections and work out which figures belong together.
The same applies to a loan. A person needs to understand both the value of their assets and the amount they owe. If those figures are combined without a clear explanation, the total can be difficult to interpret even when the calculation is correct. I wanted the overview to make those differences visible, so the client did not have to rely on a relationship manager to explain the account structure first.
Bringing the information into one overview
I brought vault, staking and portfolio holdings together so clients could see them in one overview. I also separated loans into liabilities, which meant the value of their assets remained visible and they could see what they owed separately.
For the amounts, I introduced rules for how many decimal places to show depending on the currency. I added allocation and performance views for people who wanted to look further into their portfolio, and placed deposit, withdrawal and trading actions beside the holdings they related to.
Some clients had several accounts in the same currency, so those also needed to be distinguishable. Showing an account alias and number helped make it clear which account they were looking at.
These changes gave the client and relationship manager the same overview to refer to during a conversation. They could look at the assets and loans together without having to piece the information together from different sections.
Checking whether the overview was easier to use
For a change like this, I want to check whether people can find the information they came for and explain what they are looking at. A simpler-looking screen is only helpful if the amounts and categories still make sense. In this case, that also meant considering the consultation, because a relationship manager and client needed to use the overview together.
In an internal usability test with 10 participants, the score for finding information increased from 5 out of 10 to 9 out of 10. The consultation experience score increased from 3 to 7. It was a small internal test, but it gave us a way to check whether the changes made the information easier to find and discuss.