Taking the fear out of the first trade

A dark trading app on a phone standing among warm travertine stone, showing a 120,460 dollar trading account.

Capital.com is a high-volume trading platform where first-time investors and professionals trade side by side. The product was powerful but intimidating: leverage jargon, dense charts, and an account state only experts could read. I redesigned the core mobile journey, from the morning greeting to the moment a trade is placed.

RoleLead Product Designer

ScopeCore mobile trading experience

My ownershipExperience strategy · Information architecture · Trading interactions · Risk communication · Prototyping · Design system direction

Worked withProduct · Engineering

The trading system: candlestick charts, instrument cards, index tiles, buy and sell ratios and asset classes, composed as one dark component family.

The system

One design language, from first glance to fast markets.

Charts, instrument cards, watchlists, indices, news: every surface a trader touches was rebuilt as one family. The same component holds a beginner buying their first share of gold and a professional scanning volatility before the open. Consistency is what lets density feel calm, and calm is what keeps a first-time trader in the room.

The best risk warning is an interface you can actually read.

Margin clarity

Making risk legible at a glance.

Margin was the moment the platform lost people. Percentages sat against dollar figures, statuses crowded the display, and the one question that matters (am I safe, or about to be closed out?) had no clear answer. I iterated the account header from mismatched numbers to a single gauge with safe, action and closed zones, backed by plain available and used bars. Account risk became readable in one glance, on the same screen as the ticket where it matters.

Margin made legible: the account header with a margin gauge and safe, action and closed zones, the available and used bars, and the CFD ticket, set against amethyst crystal.

Conversational insight

Ask a question. Understand the market. Act.

The journey opens with a greeting, not a chart. A trader asks what is driving the gold price today and gets a plain-language answer: the price, the move, and the two forces behind it. The insight lands one tap from the ticket, so understanding flows straight into action. Questions become considered trades instead of abandoned sessions.

The conversational journey: a good morning greeting with a golden orb, a plain-language market conversation, and the trade screen, set over amethyst crystal.

Outcomes

Confidence, designed in.

Product outcomeReduced the interpretation needed to read margin state, consolidating fragmented balances and percentages into a single risk model, on the screen where the decision is made.

Delivery outcomeA reusable component language spanning markets, watchlists, account state and trade entry, so the same system serves a first-time buyer and a professional.

More work

That same push, taking something dense and high-stakes and making it calm and legible, carried into rebuilding a bank for mobile.

NatWest Bankline case study cover: two phones with the cashflow wheel.

NatWest Bankline Rebuilding Bankline for mobile.

TryHackMe case study cover: a friendly ghost mascot on neon-lit platforms.

TryHackMe Making seven million learners feel differently about cyber security.

A few quicker wins

Ziglu Founding design on a UK money-and-crypto app that drew a $75M Robinhood offer.

FreeBnk Hid the chain so DeFi felt like banking.

M&S One shop across in-store and click-and-collect.