Helping Selftrade rebuild trust and momentum through design sprints
Selftrade needed to reverse growing customer frustration and regain product momentum. In a few focused weeks, we aligned their cross-functional team, prototyped key improvements and validated them with real users.
What if we created a simple trading platform?
Selftrade was struggling with negative user feedback, slow releases, and uncertainty about which features would actually improve customer experience. Their team needed clarity, confidence and a way to move forward without investing months of engineering effort.
The challenge
Selftrade’s legacy trading platform was generating increasing customer complaints. The business needed to understand:
- what was driving negative sentiment
- which improvements would have the biggest impact
- how to deliver meaningful updates consistently
- whether new feature ideas were worth investing in
The team also had siloed functions and little shared understanding of the real user problems. Before accelerating delivery, they needed alignment and evidence.
Our approach
We ran an accelerated discovery and prototyping track grounded in design sprint principles. The goal was simple: create clarity fast.
Across a tightly-run collaborative process, we:
- brought customer service, developers, marketing and analysts together to build shared understanding
- mapped the critical user journeys that were breaking trust
- reframed the backlog to focus on high-leverage customer problems
- built click-through prototypes showing potential trading improvements
- validated assumptions through moderated user testing
The emphasis throughout was speed, collaboration and evidence, not documentation.
What we delivered
A validated direction for the product
User testing surfaced clear behavioural patterns and showed which ideas were worth pursuing and which should be dropped.
Human-tested prototypes
Real customers interacted with new trading concepts early, providing immediate guidance on usability, trust factors and clarity.
A rebuilt, prioritised backlog
We transformed an outdated backlog into a focused, actionable roadmap with clear user stories, acceptance criteria and sequencing for delivery teams.
A more aligned and empowered team
For many participants this was the first time they had collaborated cross-functionally. By the end of the engagement they shared a common understanding of customer pain points and what to tackle first.
The outcome
The redesigned journeys and backlog moved straight into production. Selftrade’s team gained renewed momentum, clearer priorities and the confidence to release updates with purpose. What started with negative user sentiment shifted into a structured, user-informed roadmap for continuous improvement.
