Cargill

Cargill

Commodities trading app

The challenge
The Cargill trading environment used outmoded tools including complex spreadsheets and legacy apps which were never designed with the user at the centre of the experience. Our challenge was to design a contemporary trading app which articulated how this would work, working closely with users to inform our design decisions.

The client had been burned before by other design consultancies who had promised plenty and delivered little. This engagement was a testing ground for us to prove we can work closely with their trading team to understand their needs and create a working prototype within weeks not months.

The engagement involved travelled to the Cargill offices in The Netherlands to run workshops that were set out to understand what would need to be designed to be an adequate replacement to the current working tools.

With the knowledge that the client had been disappointed with progress in the past, our aim was to show the business something of relatively high fidelity as soon as possible with the aim of using the iterative process to add higher fidelity in the future. Each week we would have workshops with various stakeholders to understand their needs and present back each week our proposed approach. 


My Responsibilities

  • Conduct user interviews and observational studies to gain an understanding of the design engagements objectives.
  • Leaning on our prior trading app design experience we were able to rapidly create a semi-high-definition prototype which expressed how the app's user experience and GUI could work. 
  • Regularly present back an updated prototype to stakeholders and traders which articulated new findings and functionality learnt from user research.
  • These sessions helped all participants understand the vision for the trading app. It also helped spark discussions amongst cross-functional teams who to date had been working in a silo with regard to this engagement.  
  • Follow this process until the end of the engagement leaving the client with a clearer understanding of how this new app could be envisioned.