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The Challenge: Envision a novel user experience for the first institutional e-brokerage firm Business Overview While the Internet has created tremendous efficiencies for retail trading, institutional trading has not yet benefited appreciably from this innovation. Liquidnetä is a Manhattan-based startup whose vision is to become the first institutional e-brokerage firm. Its name appropriately conveys the key feature of the product: giving trading firms instant liquidity with large block orders. Liquidnet also provides the following value-added benefits: lower commission, anonymous execution, reduction in market impact, and quicker execution. Liquidnet's system architecture and business model are designed to solve the main problem facing new execution venues: gaining a critical mass of liquidity on day one. In addition, Liquidnet is committed to providing complete straight-through processing (STP) from order initiation through settlement and establishing a new level of world-class member services for the industry. At the time Liquidnet retained HumanLogic’s
services, Liquidnet had defined the functional specifications for their
product but had not yet developed a prototype to show potential investors,
customers and partners. HumanLogic was retained to assist Liquidnet in
conceptualizing it's product user experience and producing a prototype
that presented a clear product visualization. HumanLogic began by conducting a strategy session with Liquidnet executives to rapidly establish the business goals and customer goals for the product and align them with customer requirements. Competitive offerings were also analyzed to determine which differentiating factors should be highlighted as well as what could be leveraged from successful user experiences. From this discussion, the group determined a prioritized list of functionality for the prototype. Given HumanLogic’s domain expertise in the financial services arena, an information architecture was rapidly developed to encapsulate the organization of the product. After several rapid iterations, a final information architecture was developed, which served as a blueprint for defining the product's flow and navigational paths. The team also developed a narrative that would be used to walk a potential investor or partner through the product's user experience, and illustrated specific tasks such as order broadcasting and trading negotiation. Using the information architecture and narrative as guides, HumanLogic developed prototype screens that were submitted to LiquidNnet executives for feedback. After several iterations of prototyping, HumanLogic delivered the final prototype to Liquidnet, providing them with a storyboard for their product that illustrated the user experience and illuminated the key components of their value proposition to customers, investors and partners. The prototype included a novel means for displaying real-time liquidity information and facilitating effortless trading negotiations between participants. Results Liquidnet has successfully used the prototype in meetings with potential investors and partners. HumanLogic's work on the prototype has informed the design of the Liquidnet user experience for the ultimate product, which launched in April of 2001. |
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