UX Research
Investment App
Live stream
Live Stream
in Investment
Research of the Industry & User
Research Overview
This is a UXR project from my last UX researcher job in a securities company in China. Our department was responsible for developing the investment App for our customers. Apart from trading, the App also has a live-stream platform that delivers market analysis and forecasts. This project is about the research I conducted to support the redesign of the live stream platform.
Have an overview of the industry and our competitors
Identify our users and their needs
Evaluate user satisfaction and what to improve
Identify predominant usability problems in the current design
The Problem
The department decided to put more resources into the live stream platform to improve the user experience and increase the view volume. However:
The design of the live stream platform is outdated and difficult to use
The information architecture cannot support the growing number of streams
We have a limited understanding of the users and their needs
Research Goals
The Impact
Scope
Competitor Analysis; Interview; Questionnaire
My Roles
Design and conduct research; Write research report; Present report to stakeholders
Timeline
6 Weeks
After the redesign of the live stream platform based on the research findings:
The average view volume goes up from 8.3k to 9.3k
The live-stream platform has been redesigned according to the guidelines proposed by the research results
We have gained a deeper understanding of the industry, our users and their needs.
10 interviewees with different demographic and investment backgrounds.
Questionnaire
Sample size: 1703
Research Method
Competitor Analysis
Analysed the view volume, live stream categories and selling points of 8 competitors.
Semi-structured Interview
Key Insights
Big gap between potential users and current users
Most of the users in our App are interested in investment live streams and have watched them before. However, there are only a few of them have watched investment live streams on our platform. This represents a significant opportunity gap between our current user engagement and the potential we could achieve. Our primary focus for conversion lies with young, inexperienced, yet high-frequency traders, who form the core of our intended target audience.
Four different target users
After analysing the interview and questionnaire results, four types of target users are identified: investment learners, swing traders, value investors, and fund investors.
Investment learner
Swing trader
Value investor
Fund investor
Age
Experience
Investment Assets
Why invest
Prefered live-stream
Watching frequency
Why live-stream
Requirements for live-stream
25-35
46-55
46-55
36-45
Less than one year
6-9 years
More than 10 years
3-5 years
Bonds
Stocks, ETFs, Futures
Stocks, Funds
Funds
As a learning process
full-time, maximise profit
Entertainment, make profit
Appreciate assets
Investment learning
2-3 times a week
Live analysis
Everyday (listening)
Interview
Once a week
Fund investment
Once a month
More engaging, ask questions
Good companion, collect information
Learn expert’s forecast of the market
Get to know the fund manager
“The host should be a good teacher. And the content should be easy to understand and useful”
“While reading the tape, it is good to listen to some important news and analysis about today’s market.
“It is important for the forecast to have a clear direction and solid evidence.”
“It is important to know the investment concept of the fund manager”
Guotai Junan
For developing live analysis, Hithink and Guotai Junan serve as solid references. Both emphasize live analysis, the most popular live stream type. As a trading platform of securities company, Guotai Junan shares our regulatory constraints, making it a relevant model for our live stream development.
What do users care about
“Easy to understand”, “Useful and practical”, and “Professional and reliable analysis” are the three key attributes users believe are important in an investment live stream. Users also need the audio version and text summary of the live stream so they could listen or read in any context and scenarios.
How can we improve
The overall satisfaction of live-stream on our platform is lower than the competitor that we researched before.
Users rated low satisfactory scores to the two important dimensions of the live stream, “Easy to understand” and “Concise and coherent”. We should work on those two major weaknesses of the live stream platform.
Among the top four live stream types that users are interested in, our live-stream platform only produces one of them. We should expand the live stream types to attract a wider range of users. Live analysis can be a good starting point given the main user group of our App and the current resources we have.
Competitor References
Hithink
East Money
Among our competitors, East Money stands out for its high-quality, varied live streams that are user-friendly and visually engaging. Its platform's clear and intuitive information architecture aligns well with our user profile findings.
Reflection
This was also the first UX research project I carried out independently in the workplace, from discussing the research aims with product managers, planning and conducting the research to providing feedback to UX designers about their new design. It was a rather challenging project as there is no previous research about the user group of the live-stream platform has been done before. And there was no event tracking data for me to gather some basic idea about the user either.
Communication is always essential during the whole research process. It is important to constantly talk to the product manager and UX designer about the logistics of the original design and also to inform them of research findings to help them accept some of the research results they may feel resistant to. Professionalism and attention to detail are also important to build up people’s trust in the research, so improving the influence of the team.