Cloud9: Trading Desk of the Future

For decades, the trading turret has served as the centerpiece of the trader's desk. While financial markets have rapidly evolved, the physical hardware and software supporting traders remained largely unchanged, relying on dated interfaces, fragmented workflows, and legacy technology.

Cloud9 partnered with PA Consulting to reimagine this experience from the ground up. Together, we set out to modernize both the iconic trading turret and the digital ecosystem surrounding it, creating a cloud-based platform designed for the next generation of trading.

Problem

Cloud9, a cloud-based trading platform, faced challenges with its outdated user experience, which hindered efficiency and limited the trading workflow. The existing hardware and software did not fully leverage modern technologies to support a seamless, integrated, and compliant voice infrastructure essential for traders. Furthermore, the platform needed to enhance its connectivity to a global community and move beyond merely replacing hard turrets to become a pivotal element of the future trader desktop.

Solution

To address these challenges, we partnered with Cloud9 to redesign the user experience for both hardware and software. Our solution made the platform more intuitive and efficient, allowing traders to access Cloud9 from any device, whether at their desk or on the go. This eliminated the need for hard-wired trading turrets and provided a fully-compliant voice infrastructure, enhancing connectivity to a global trading community and transforming Cloud9 into a key component of the future trader desktop.

Client: Cloud9 Technologies

Role: Lead UX/UI Designer

Timeline: 2017-2018

Team: Experience Design, Human Insights, Industrial Design, Engineering

Outputs: User Research, Experience Strategy, Trading Workflows, Physical-Digital Ecosystem Concepts, UX/UI Frameworks, Interactive Prototypes

Define

We collaborated closely with Cloud9's stakeholders to understand their challenges and set clear objectives for the project. We identified key pain points in the current user experience and established a vision for the future platform.

Discover

Conducted generative research with 22 traders and brokers across 10 financial institutions, synthesizing workflows, pain points, behavioral archetypes, and user needs into actionable design criteria, experience principles, information architecture, and concept directions that guided the product vision.

Design & prototype

Translated research insights into user flows, navigation structures, wireframes, feature concepts, and high-fidelity hardware and software prototypes. Explored multiple experience directions, visualized key workflows, and iteratively refined concepts through testing with traders, brokers, and stakeholders.