Pivotscan Watchlist
Trading tool to track and watch the stock market
Pivotscan Watchlist
Role
Product Design Intern
Duration
2 months (Jun - Jul 2025)
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Windsurf, Cascade
The problem
Through analytics and user interviews, we identified three critical pain points:
🔍
No Home Base
Users had no way to save stocks within the platform, forcing them to rely on external tools
🔐
No Memory
Even when traders found a promising stock, they had no way to record why they saved it
⚡
No Good Alternative
Research & discovery
Before touching Figma, I spent time in research mode: competitive analysis across TradingView, TrendSpider, and TC2000, plus interviews with the founder, engineering lead, an investor, and loyal customers.
The competitor analysis revealed something interesting...
Key findings
→
Watchlist features existed everywhere, but they were either complex or frustratingly rigid
→
Current platforms had tagging, but the customization stopped there
→
Advanced traders don't manage 5 stocks. They manage 50+ watchlists.
The real turning point came from a single user interview. A loyal Pivotscan customer tested an early prototype and gave me feedback I didn't expect. He liked the table layout. He liked that it felt consistent with the rest of the platform. But then he said something that reframed the whole project:
"I sometimes forget why I save stocks. I use sticky notes right now. I'd love something like that, but in the platform."
He wasn't looking for a storage feature, he was looking for a memory feature. That one comment shifted my thinking from "how do we save stocks?" to "how do we help traders remember their own reasoning?" Those are very different design problems.
Design process
I followed a structured design thinking approach
1
Ideation & sketching
Workshops with stakeholders to explore solutions
•
Crazy 8s sketching sessions
•
User journey mapping
•
Feature prioritization
2
Wireframing & prototyping
Low-fidelity wireframes to test information architecture
•
Created 15+ wireframe variations
•
Decided on final Watchlist layout and features
3
Implementation
Design system and feature integration
•
Presented designs to developer team
•
Implemented HTML/CSS assisted by AI
•
Developer handoff
Final design solutions
The redesigned experience addressed each pain point with specific design solutions:
What shipped, and what it did
The final Watchlist feature gave Pivotscan users a clean, centralized place to save stocks, annotate their thinking, and organize across dozens of lists, all without leaving the platform.
Site visits increased 35%, exceeding the team's original 25% goal. Post-launch surveys confirmed users were reaching for external tools less often. The feature also laid the groundwork for premium offerings on the companion mobile app, Charttreker, which is where the business's primary revenue lives.
But the number I think about most isn't the 35%. It's the 1 trader who was writing on a whiteboard. The feature was built for him, and it worked.
Setbacks and challenges
I skipped formal user testing. With eight weeks on the clock, the team and I made the call to move faster and rely on qualitative feedback from interviews rather than structured testing cycles. It kept the project on track, but it's the decision I'd revisit if I had more time.
I also didn't get to witness the launch directly or see user reactions in real time. The 35% increase in site visits and the post-launch survey results came to me secondhand. Knowing what I know now, I'd have pushed harder to stay close to that moment.
If I did this again, I'd carve out time for A/B testing to pressure-test the customization decisions, specifically around how many color options feel empowering vs. decision-fatiguing, and whether the notes feature surfaces naturally enough without prompting.
What I learned
Research is only as good as who you talk to.
One conversation with a real user unlocked more direction than hours of competitive analysis.
Constraints force clarity.
Eight weeks with no template forced me to prioritize. I shipped less than I imagined, but what shipped was intentional.
Designing for advanced users means respecting their complexity.
The instinct to simplify can actually patronize advanced users. Sometimes more color options, more control, and more flexibility is the right answer.
Skipping testing is a debt, not a shortcut.
I got away with it this time, but the questions I couldn't answer after launch reminded me that qualitative feedback and structured testing aren't interchangeable.