I Redesigned Robinhood's App

Happy Hump Day. I said these newsletters were going to be all over the place, so welcome back.

This week we are going to talk about the reasoning for why I completely redesigned the Robinhood app. This newsletter will really dive into my product brain.

I lay it all out below. If you aren’t interested feel free to tune into next week.

A Call For a New Layout

Imagine telling someone in 2004 that they will be able to invest in any asset they want on a 5 inch tall device that you can hold in your hand? They would laugh. These fintech apps, including Robinhood, are so immensely powerful. It is hard to fit every action easily into one screen.

This is my gripe with most fintech apps right now. They all can do so much, yet sometimes its so hard to find that one thing you want to do. Hence the redesign.

Quick Note

First, I want to say that Robinhood, along with most other fintech apps have probably spent hundreds of hours analyzing the layouts of their app and what the opening screen is. There is a reason the app is designed the way it is. So why redesign it? Because its fun and crazy of me to think I know better than the experts who spend their entire day doing this.

Let’s Run Through It

We are going to work top to bottom. First things first, your assets. Users are quickly able to see how they have performed for the past week, money, year, or YTD. Most people just want this when they hop into the app so best just to serve it on a platter. I would also offer a quick path to a chart view as well. (Sidebar, a ticker running across the top of the screen would be cool but not necessary.)

Next, I want to call out the search bar. The use of this will be completely reinvented as you can see by the little AI symbol on the left. This search bar will now include actions as well as stocks. You can type in “AMZN”, which will bring you to that stock, or you can type “Tax Documents”, which will bring you to your tax documents. Imagine this as the search bar on your IPhone when you look for apps.

In the middle of the page, I am calling this the action center. The top 3 to the left are customizable. The bottom right is whatever call to action Robinhood wants to put there. Every user uses Robinhood a little differently. This section allows users to segment their top 3 actions so that they are just one click away at any time. They will be able to change this at anytime using the customize button on the bottom right.

Alright I am open to ideas on this one, but I like this tags idea because it gives the user so many potential jumping off points (this is currently in another part of the app). They can explore deep into Robinhood with any of these tags, and get new ideas of how to use the app. And of course the nav bar at the bottom is carried over.

That’s all. The entire idea here is to make every action in the app less than 2 clicks away. The goal is to also make the app feel like an entire financial center, not just a stock trading app. If Robinhood’s goal is to make the next great financial platform, they need to not have the first opening screen be a 1-day chart.

Thanks for coming, see you next week.