Overview

Over a span of four months, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the UI/UX team at OANDA, stepping into a pivotal role in redesigning the activation pages as part of their comprehensive design system overhaul. Working closely with another designer and the lead web developer, our focus was on addressing issues related to user engagement, unbalanced information hierarchies, and the challenging transition from web to mobile views.

OANDA's ongoing platform evolution involves transitioning to an updated design system (Kiwi) from the former system (9SF), while maintaining consistency for a substantial user base that has been clients of the current products for decades, and are therefore familiar with the current design. The challenge lay in redesigning pages for new account sign-ups and verification document uploads to seamlessly transition between the old user flow while incorporating new changes reflective of OANDA's brand.

Discovery

During activation of a forex account, a completed corporate document is required to download as a PDF and must be filled out securely for submission. Forms will either need to be submitted as an extension of the activation flow, or through an external source (ie. via email), depending on the user's region. To begin building the flow, a list of assumptions and questions were established in preparation to communicate and build alignment with developers and product managers.

To address these challenges, we mapped out potential user flows with guidance from cross-functional team members to ensure feasibility and answer , while considering user habits and preferences. The design team concurred that, from a business standpoint, leveraging existing UI components on the web platform and prioritizing UX updates was the optimal approach. For the mobile version, given ongoing small changes already being applied in the fxTrade app, users on mobile were likely acquainted with OANDA's Kiwi design system to some extent, and would therefore adopt further design changes. Upon OANDA verification, users ready to trade would be directed to a thank-you page with multiple CTAs, including Add Funds and Download App. Kiwi would then be introduced progressively. Given that corporate registrations predominantly occur on desktops, the design focus was primarily on webpages.

Iteration

The required activation pages were divided into the following scenarios:

Feedback from developers & product teams

Once the UX team was satisfied with the design, we synced up with the developers and product teams from all divisions to accumulate feedback and tackle any unanswered questions.

Questions and feedback included:

Since there are a lot of documents that corporate entities need to upload, it would be better to have separate upload buttons for each document
Is there a way to automatically download the application document when the user continues to the upload page? Right now it doesn't seem as explicit and they might just bypass the download overall.
What does the thank you page look like for users that choose to email their documents instead of uploading them on the platform?
We prefer to have users upload their documents since emailing is more tedious, but there are users that prefer using email. Can we try to direct less focus to the emailing option?
If new clients fail the CKA, they won't be able to trade but we want to encourage them to attend workshops and go through trading material. On the thank you page, it might be a good idea to add links to those resources.

Final Design

Taking feedback from the developers and the product team, I went on to continue with additional iterations, followed by approval from all sides to begin developing. The primary developer on this project did one final review with me for verification on whether the product met design standards. Any final development changes were made, and the designs were live! Comparisons of some screens from first iterations to the final iteration are shown below:

Driving engagement on Forex activation screens

Overview

Discovery

Iteration

Feedback from developers & product teams

Final Design