I share the experience that professionals in the financial services industry seem to crave a remarkably high level of information density and favor what they perceive as "quick" access to information.
For example, in one application we found that potential users disfavored a navigation design that was deeper because they felt that having to make extra clicks (navigating down sublevels) was slower than a broad, shallow navigation. In terms of clock time, navigating the broad design was slower, but their perception was that more clicks = more slow. I've also found that (like a lot of specialists) financial professionals are very language-sensitive. In a couple of cases I've worked on applications that received negative feedback because of what the professionals perceived as misuse of "market lingo" (their term). This poses some challenges because the lingo can change in subtle ways from situation to situation. For example, "international" trading can mean "trading exclusively non-US securities" in one context and "trading securities of all countries, including the US" in another. I've also found a wide variation in terms of how "freeform" users want things to be. Workers (traders) at large financial institutions (e.g. major Wall Street banks) seemed to favor rigidly defined roles, no customization, and strict access controls. Conversely, workers who held the same job title (trader) at small hedge funds wanted high levels of customization, free access to everything, and large amounts of self-determination in application appearance and behavior. Best regards, --Alan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
