What is Centroid
Centroid is a solution that helps OTC brokers exposed to market risks to understand and efficiently manage their exposure in real-time while at the same time reduce their operational costs and at the same time increase their trading performance.
Centroid computes real-time your effective portfolio exposure (value-at-risk) and based on your defined risk limit generates alerts and hedging recommendations.
This is one of many functionalities, such as client risk profiling, revenue and cost breakdown at position level, break-even price calculation or in-depth reporting. Centroid addresses needs beyond those of the Risk Officer and the Head Trading as well the Top Management as it is a way to increase information transparency and improve the effectiveness of your company while preserving the capital engaged.
The challenge
Designing financial interfaces is hard. Designing professional tools for brokers is 100x harder. When the client first showed me their wireframes, I was terrified and was about to decline the project. By that moment, I designed a few projects in fintech industry including one for a Bitcoin-exchange company, but this project seemed too complex. I shared my concerns with the client and after a very long Skype conversation; I agreed to take on the project. Also, I never designed for Windows before but it looked like an interesting experience to get. The project was very challenging from the very beginning but worked out really well.
Designing elements
It took some time to define a style and color palette for the app. The client wanted to
use classic red and green colors and eventually we picked a dark scheme because
most of the brokers often times work at night.
The app frame
The client planned on having Windows and Mac versions of the app
without changing the design. I had to create the same design for both platforms
keeping in mind that most of the users will use the app on Windows.
Final design
Working on the project was very challenging but satisfying. Gradually, terrifying wireframes turned
into a nice and clean app, still inaccessible for most of the people but very helpful for brokers.
My main goal was to make sophisticated software more usable and friendly.
The icon
For the app icon I decided to combine the first letter of the app's name (Centroid)
and shape of a pie chart to represent the nature of the company.
