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This project is a submission for the Kleiner Perkins Design Fellowship, 2021. The goal is to redesign a feature from any of the companies participating in the program. I decided to redesign the messages feature of Robinhood's iOS app.
Just me — this was a solo redesign project.
User Testing and Product Design
2 weeks, Oct 2020
Robinhood iOS App Users
Paper, Pencil, Figma
Without a doubt, Robinhood is one of the best-designed apps. However, there is room for improvement in their Messages feature. It seems to be redundant as one's investment history can be viewed separately.
A redesigned Messages feature that helps investors get information like news and earnings calls that are relevant to their stocks so that they can make investment decisions in a well-informed manner.
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I set up 3 few remote user testing sessions on Zoom to see how users interact with Messages on the app. I selected a sample of younger investors, ones between the ages of 18 to 24 because some quick market research showed that they were the most active users of Robinhood. Here are some of their thoughts:
"So the messaging feature is slapping some paint on the History section, giving it a new name, and requiring one less tap to access"
"Look, I love Robinhood and I really appreciate their UI, but this is just my order and dividend history with emojis added to it."
Order history shown in the form of messages
After doing a little research about this feature, I realized that it was designed with good intentions. As Robinhood's blog says, its purpose is to "provide timely, relevant, and actionable updates tailored to the user's account".
And it does do a great job of delivering your investment history in a conversational format along with call-to-action buttons which direct to many of Robinhood's existing features.
Several quick interactions just through messages
But the insight was that messages being sent are of little value to the user — they would get unnecessary notifications through messages.. In fact, 2 out of 5 users had muted notifications from Messages.