Research
I visited a few trading desks and interviewed traders, where I gained a bunch of insights. The most surprising was that they worked on rubbish old uncalibrated monitors in configurations 2x3 or 3x3.
I also interviewed team members who somehow interacted with our users.
Establishing relationships
When I started, the engineering team was highly skeptical about design. After all, they had worked for 6 years without a designer.
I had to find a common ground with them and change their attitude.
Approaches I used:
Maximum transparency. I asked engineers' opinions about every significant update and explained the logic behind it
Listening. I carefully considered all concerns and didn't move forward without being sure that engineers agree with a design
Suggesting dumb solutions. Sometimes, engineers said that something was impossible to do. In such cases, I suggested any solutions that came into my mind. The trick is, after the engineers' thinking process has started, finding a good solution is easy
Make my own hands dirty. For some tasks, it was quicker to code something by yourself than to ask somebody else
As a result, my work with engineers was smooth, and I even got praise from the CTO.
Top panel
I like to hit a few targets with one arrow, so I started redesigning from the top panel to:
Improve navigation
Focus people on the most important functions
Start building a brand
Show that the product is changing
Widgets
The system contained an enormous amount of information, which is why it worked like a desktop: users could create their own desktop using the most relevant widgets.
My next step was to update the widget design. I started by fixing the old design's primary UI problems.
I created a bunch of new principles that were rolled out to all widgets.
At this moment, stakeholders decided to shift team efforts to new features, so I didn't have enough time to dig deeper and implement all of my ideas.
Outcome
The result was a much friendlier and memorable interface, and it got great feedback from our users.
