One screen for spot and forwards

The problem

EBS was expanding beyond its central limit order book for spot into bilateral liquidity with EBS Direct, a new platform for FX Forwards (outrights and currency swaps). Forwards still ran largely on phone and chat, and traders were already split across a native Windows C++ app, an Adobe Flex app and early HTML: three interaction models for one high-stakes task repeated thousands of times a day.

Key decisions

1. Put both markets on one screen. Blue price cards carry EBS Market spot; green cards carry EBS Direct bilateral liquidity. Traders read both sources side by side without switching applications.
2. Lay out the screen by the trader's scan path. High-density pricing grids, depth ladders and order entry are placed for peripheral reading, so a trader can watch several pairs while acting on one.
3. Redesign iceberg orders for speed. Traders slice, hide and execute large-block spot orders through high-density tiles and hotkeys instead of a multi-step modal. This workflow drove a 30% acceleration in Spot FX on $100B average trading volume.
4. Turn multi-leg tickets into one action. Forward and swap quotes that took a phone call or chat thread and a multi-field ticket became single-click responses and custom hotkeys.
5. Build the safety rails into the ticket. Automated pre-trade credit checks, pre-populated deal templates and strict tolerance bounds replaced manual entry, removing the source of fat-finger errors on multi-million-dollar notionals.

How we validated it

On-floor usability sessions with active institutional bank traders, FX desk heads and liquidity providers in London and New York. We tested the pricing grids, depth ladders and hotkey execution flows against split-second trading under heavy volatility.