J. P. Morgan

Global Shares is a J.P. Morgan company that manages employee stock plans for some of the world’s most exciting startups, tech companies, and enterprise brands. Aiming to help companies worldwide grow through the power of employee ownership, they asked us to improve the user experience of Equity Gateway, a platform designed for employees to view and manage their company stock holdings.

The Equity Gateway platform is available as a website and a mobile app. However, there is a mismatch between them, caused by the lack of consistency in the design and features. We aimed to improve the user experience to attract new users and prompt existing ones to return frequently, reduce user inquiries requiring helpdesk support, and minimize maintenance costs. 

Equity Gateway accommodates a wide-ranging and varied audience. It serves individuals with different age groups (ranging from 18 to 70+), genders, nationalities, and backgrounds, encompassing everyone from construction workers to top executives.
This platform allows users to choose which stock ownership plans they want to participate in, to track their evolution over time, and to sell or transfer their shares. It is a one-stop platform for employees to manage all aspects of their company stock ownership.

Due to the Equity Gateway platform’s extensive functionalities and customization options, we organized the project into manageable steps. In the research phase, we conducted expert walkthroughs to identify cognitive barriers and usability problems by examining task flows and interface design from a user’s perspective. We interviewed stakeholders to understand their perspectives and expectations toward the project. We also organized an ideation workshop to discuss ideas.

After research, we used wireframes to plan a user-friendly interface tailored to the users’ needs. We sketched and prototyped the most effective solutions to modernize the platform’s appearance, creating a navigation system with clear visuals and comprehensive data. This improved portfolio tracking, providing users with details on their stock plans and equity holdings.

We streamlined the processes of opening accounts, enrolling in new stock plans, managing taxes, and consulting essential information by making them easier to understand and accessible. Additionally, we removed technical language and simplified concepts, empowering users to access documents autonomously, such as tax statements. We also facilitated transactions so users could exercise options, sell, or transfer shares to make a profit.

Once validated, we refined the solutions through rounds of feedback with the stakeholders. At the same time, we conducted moderated usability testing sessions using Maze. This testing platform allowed us to gather relevant quantitative data such as misclick rate, and average time spent on a screen, guaranteeing the design addressed the user’s needs and improved processes.
Ultimately, we created the final screens and transferred the design assets, specifications, and documentation for development handoff.

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