By Ivan Kunyankin, Data Science Team Lead at Devexperts.
We’re now three and a half years since LLMs burst into the mainstream, following the public release of ChatGPT at the close of 2022. It would go on to be the fastest growing consumer application in history, amassing more than 100 million users in two months. It also spawned an entire industry tasked with applying the underlying technology’s innovations to businesses across all segments.
Trading has been no exception, but with many of the low hanging fruit having already been picked, what innovative use cases remain, and do these technologies promise to change trading at a more fundamental level? Below we track how AI has influenced user experience in trading thus far and look forward to what may be yet to come.From chatbots to assistants
It probably comes as no surprise that the first killer app from this current generation of AI would come in the form of much more sophisticated chatbots. In the past they were sometimes seen as more of an annoyance for customers, however, a new generation of online assistants are now able to perform as a capable first line of customer support, fielding queries, and escalating issues to human teams as the need arises.
When integrated correctly with existing customer service workflows, they’re able to multiply the number of incoming queries that can be handled by a business without bottlenecks developing.
Beyond their ability as capable support agents, these assistants have also taken on broader responsibilities as in-platform trading assistants. When given access to more than just FAQ data, they’re able to answer trading related questions, scan available instruments, provide educational recommendations, and even perform account actions. What’s most notable about this expansion of functionality is that it includes a user engagement role, which increases their value to businesses.
Beyond these benefits, they also gather data from customer interactions allowing businesses to get to know their traders better and to provide a higher level of personalization.
AI-assisted UX/UI design
AI assisted design is often overlooked as a behind-the-scenes use case, but it’s becoming increasingly influential when it comes to the product the user gets to interact with.
AI is being used to A/B test design choices, gathering and synopsizing user preferences, as well as creating multiple design variations based on real feedback.
These systems are also able to analyze huge quantities of usage data and distill insights that can be used to inform design choices. This provides designers with a valuable view of how users move around their applications, allowing them to make them more user-friendly.
A 2024 study of AI-driven UX/UI design highlighted the urgency with which fintech firms surveyed were incorporating some form of AI in their design processes. The same study highlighted the user retention, stickiness, and feature discovery benefits of such an approach, while also indicating that digital banking apps were leading the way when it comes to AI-driven design.The bleeding edge of this approach involves using AI to personalize user interfaces in real-time based on individual user preferences. Allowing client segmentation techniques to influence the “default” layouts that different groups of users see.
Dematerializing user experience
Despite the evident promise of the above approaches, the exponential improvement in AI natural language processing capabilities may be leading to a more foundational shift in the way new traders interact with their platforms.
Voice-based interactions are on the rise in everything from device assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, to individual applications. More than half of all global searches are now conducted via voice, with hands-free convenience and faster task completion top of mind among users. Predictably, smartphones are in pole position in this regard, accounting for around 56% of global voice-based searches.
There’s an argument to be made that trading applications, which have lagged behind neobank apps when it comes to UX design, could leapfrog current developments by making voice UI’s the new standard when it comes to trading. This may seem far-fetched for the chartists among us, but usage statistics do show a trend towards voice-based interactions across generations. In other words, this is not just a Gen-Z or Millennial preoccupation.
We don’t tend to consider voice as a part of UX design due to the overwhelming dominance of the visual interfaces we’ve learned to interact with. This, however, is just an accident of history owing to the limited capabilities of early hardware. Voice-based user interfaces offer many advantages in addition to hands-free convenience and faster interactions. Voice-based interfaces are also far more accessible, are more intuitive for people to use, and don’t require the user to learn yet another graphical language.
Today’s trading platform assistants are more than capable of placing, adjusting, and closing orders, applying stop-loss and take-profit levels, and performing account management functions. When correctly integrated with incoming market data, they can also answer price-related queries and perform technical analysis. Moreover, they can be instructed to provide alerts when certain events take place, whether in-platform, account-based, or price-based.
Furthermore (and this is why the technology is proving to be so attractive to users across the board), voice essentially unites all compatible applications into one by removing the need to split attention between a collection of different graphical user interfaces. Voice becomes the new unifying thread, providing users with a more holistic experience across touchpoints.
Apps that cannot compete with the Big 4 (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) in terms of screentime have a lot to gain by focusing on alternative input methods such as voice (and text). We found this out when we integrated DXtrade’s trading assistant with Discord, Telegram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, which essentially allows traders to interact with the platform without having to navigate away from their preferred communication apps. Having your trading assistant as another contact with a chat history makes undeniable sense for a great deal of today’s users.
Final thoughts
It’s increasingly likely that the future of trading platform usage may not depend on increasingly slicker GUIs, but rather the ability to translate what traders need most into simple commands that can be issued by voice. This may not be the preference for all traders, but as trading itself becomes more of a lifestyle product, we’re likely to see user experience trends across the app landscape shaping how this former niche continues to be used by the majority.
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