Frade - social trading app UX/UI design

Turning real stock trading into something you can explore, discuss and share with friends.

Project at a glance

Overview: Social trading mobile app
Scope: 40+ mobile screens
Our role: Research, product UX, moodboard, UI design, design handoff
Industry: Fintech, social investing

Introduction

Frade started with a simple but unusual idea: combine friends and trading in one app.

Users could buy and sell real stocks, see what people they follow were trading, share their own moves and discuss investments inside private groups. Today that combination feels familiar. When we designed Frade, there were very few established patterns to follow.

Problem

The client came to us with an idea and a feature list. No product structure, no wireframes and no ready answer for how social interaction and real trading should work together.

That was the real challenge. A trading app needs clarity and trust. A social app needs conversation and discovery. We had to combine both without making the financial side feel like entertainment or the social side feel disconnected from the actual investment experience.

How we solved it

Research and stakeholder interviews
UNDERSTAND THE PRODUCT
We worked with stakeholders to clarify the product idea, user needs, trading logic, and how social interaction should fit around a real investment experience.
UX flows and product structure
CONNECT TRADING AND SOCIAL
We mapped the key journeys around discovery, trading, sharing, groups, and discussions, making sure both sides of the product felt like one connected experience.
Mobile-first UI design
KEEP IT CLEAR AND NATIVE
We designed the interface around familiar mobile patterns and platform guidelines, keeping financial data easy to scan while preserving the lighter social layer.
Design system and handoff
BUILD FOR CONSISTENCY
We created a consistent visual language across roughly 40 screens and prepared the final product design for development

Home

The home screen had to combine two very different types of information: market activity and social activity.

Instead of separating them into different products, we designed one experience where both naturally support each other.

What we focused on

Made personal trading information easy to understand at a glance.
Brought activity from friends and people you follow into the same experience.
Kept financial data visually clear without turning the screen into a dense trading terminal.
Made interesting trades and conversations easy to discover without distracting from the user’s own portfolio.

Impact

Users do not just see numbers. They see what is happening around those numbers and what people they trust are doing with them.

Trading

Frade was still a real trading product, so buying and selling stocks had to feel clear, focused and trustworthy.

We designed the flow so users could explore an asset, review the key information, make a trade and then decide whether they wanted to share that move with others.

What we focused on

Kept the trading flow focused on the decision and removed unnecessary visual noise.
Made key stock information easy to scan before buying or selling.
Connected the completed trade naturally with the social layer instead of forcing users into a separate posting flow.

Impact

Trading stays serious and straightforward, while sharing becomes a natural next step rather than a feature added on top.

Share your trade

One of the core ideas behind Frade was simple: after making a trade, users could immediately share it with friends or selected groups.

Instead of manually explaining what they bought, the transaction itself became part of the post. Friends could see the move, react to it and continue the discussion from there.

What we focused on

Connected the completed trade directly to the sharing flow.
Kept key transaction details visible inside the post.
Made reactions and discussion feel natural around real investment activity.

Impact

A private investment decision becomes useful context for a conversation, making the social layer directly connected to what people are actually doing with their money.

Groups

We designed groups as small communities where friends could discuss stocks, share trades and follow specific investment topics together.

What we focused on

Let users create groups and control who joins them.
Combined normal discussion with real trading activity.
Made it easy to share a trade directly into a relevant conversation.
Kept threads simple enough to feel like a social app, not a financial forum from twenty years ago.

Impact

People can move from “What do you think about this stock?” to seeing what their friends actually bought, all inside the same conversation.

Results

The hardest part of Frade was not designing individual screens. It was making two different product worlds feel like one.

Profiles, following, groups and discussions had to feel social. Portfolio data, stock information and trade execution had to feel precise and trustworthy. We used one visual language across both so users never feel like they are jumping between a brokerage app and a social network.

In around five weeks, we turned an early idea and feature list into a complete mobile product with roughly 40 carefully designed screens, covering real trading, market discovery, social activity, groups and discussions.

The final design was handed off ready for development.

And one result became even more interesting with time: the product still looks current years later. The visual language was built around clarity, strong hierarchy and simple interaction patterns rather than short lived design trends.

For us, Frade is a good example of what we mean by lasting product design. Solve the right problem, keep the experience simple, and the interface does not need to be reinvented every couple of years.

Clarity is what moves products forward