And why I’m loving it

Me wearing my Freetrade t-shirt with pride

Me wearing my Freetrade t-shirt with pride

If you’d asked me a year ago whether I wanted to work on a product allowing people to invest in the stock market, I would have said no. I didn’t know the first thing about the stock market, plus I thought I’d already had my stint in designing for the financial world (for credit cards to be precise).

So how come, one year down the line, here I am, one month into my journey as a product designer at Freetrade, and loving it?

James, the Head of Design at Freetrade, made it clear that Freetrade is a product-first company and wants great product people who are good at what they do. He also shared one of Freetrade’s long-term goals; make investing in the stock market accessible to everyone — above the age of 18, of course.

Accessible in two senses:

  1. Accessible to those with only a small amount of money to invest. For example, before Freetrade existed, if you wanted to buy or sell shares in the UK you had to pay a hefty fee each time, which is off-putting for someone who only wants to invest a small amount of money.
  2. Accessible to those who feel they have low financial literacy or are just starting out. This barrier prevents many people from investing in the stock market for fear of not knowing what they are doing.

I realised I could leverage my empathy and lack of investing savviness to be an advocate for the people we want to appeal to.

This really excited me and so I decided to interview for the role.

Throughout the interview process it was obvious that, while the team were passionate about investing, it was just as important to be good at what they do, be they a designer, engineer or product manager.

It was clear that you didn’t have to be an investing expert to join, but that learning about investing is way more open than old school finance makes it look.

Day one

I arrive to find a shiny new laptop and some stylish swag laid out on my desk. This, combined with the fact our office sits in the amazing ‘Second Home’ building, made me feel really welcome.

Far from just being a boring old functional office, it’s filled with plants, iconic chairs and lots of little nooks you can tuck yourself away in to work. It’s welcoming, cosy, calm, inspiring and Instagram worthy.

I boot up my laptop and find I have handy checklists and onboarding documents that give me all I need to onboard as a designer at Freetrade. My onboarding is painless, and in fact a joy (how often can you say a checklist made you laugh?)!

Two items on my checklist are to choose what phone I would like (I go for an iPhone XR) and to order a pair of noise-cancelling earphones, which Freetrade will contribute £100 towards. Yes boss!

As well as the noise-cancelling earphones we have “No meetings Tuesday” (A.K.A TuesNay 🙅‍♀️) here, which means there’s time to get your head down and focus 100%.

First project

After getting set up, I’m on my first job quickly: creating a full flow map of our current user experience.

I present it back in our weekly design critique (which is open to anyone in the company to join and see what we are working on), with my suggestions of how we could improve people’s experience with Freetrade in the future.

The team were enthusiastic about the suggestion of how we could improve the experience and I was asked to share it with the rest of the company.

It was amazing to work on and contribute something significant almost as soon as I joined.

Hanging in pride of place in our office - I really love that people are at the heart of what we do here

While I’m working on this project, I also set up meetings with everyone in the senior team to help me ramp up and understand Freetrade and our industry as quickly as possible.

I prepare myself to be overwhelmed with lots of information, but everyone speaks in a clear and easy to understand way and my investment crash course is fantastic.

I especially enjoy speaking with Rob (Head of Finance and Brokerage Ops), who explains to me the depth of what actually happens in the background when someone buys or sells a share through Freetrade.

The most interesting thing I learn is our key difference from most other investing apps. They are typically just a front end, whereas we are a fully authorised stockbroker. As part of this, we’ll be able to offer exciting features like fractional shares.

To give you context, a fractional share enables you to buy a fraction of a share (makes sense), rather than needing to buy an entire share. This lets you invest the amount of your choosing into the company of your choice.

It opens up the ability to invest in companies like Amazon, whose shares are (at the time of writing this blog) $1,648.97 a pop. 🤓

Working on Android

Soon after the flow map, I am put onto my next project and it’s a big one: helping to design the Android app. We released our iOS app back in October and we have lots of eager Android users waiting to get access to Freetrade.

A sneak peak at the activity feed in the Android app

At Freetrade we use a tool called ‘Figma’, which is super awesome as it allows you to consider how to design responsively and also lets everyone in your company feedback on the designs.

We have a diverse range of skills in the design team and different areas of strength, so we carry out frequent knowledge shares within the team as well as quarterly ones to the entire company.

I carry out a knowledge share on storyboarding and how it’s a useful tool for exploring concepts at an early stage, a couple of weeks later my colleague Mitchell shares his knowledge on Design Systems and how we should approach the one we are creating going forwards.

In the final week of my first month, we have our first community meetup to share our open roadmap with members of the Freetrade community. Just before our product manager Jani takes to the stage, I look around and am surprised to see the room so full of enthusiastic Freetraders. I must admit, I didn’t expect such a huge turnout!

Pretty amazing to see how many people are following what we’re doing.

Jani sharing our plans for the year

So here I am, one month into my time here at Freetrade and I can hand-on-my-heart say that I haven’t been hindered at all by my lack of financial savviness.

It’s the opposite: the team and company is built to get you up to speed and making an impact as soon as possible.

It’s been an incredible ride so far and I can’t wait to get more features out to our wonderful users.

Sound good? We’re hiring!


We’re on a mission to bring fee-free investing to Europe and beyond. 🔥

Freetrade does not provide investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice. The value of investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than your original investment. Tax laws are subject to change and may vary in how they apply depending on the circumstances.

Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).

Freetrade Blog

Follow the Freetrade blog for product updates, user stories, and insights about stock market investing.

Thanks to James Storer, Mitchell Petrie, and Viktor Nebehaj

Freetrade Blog

Follow the Freetrade blog for product updates, user stories, and insights about stock market investing.

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