The new FXCM platform brought together everything I had learned from the Design System and Tradu. Instead of starting with individual screens, we started by thinking about the product as a whole and the patterns that would support it as it grew.

Although authentication became the first area we designed, it was never the goal of the project. It was simply the first building block. Every decision needed to support what came next, from onboarding and trading to portfolio management, AI features and future functionality.

Starting from the foundation also meant thinking across platforms from day one. Every flow needed to work consistently on web, PWA, iOS and Android while respecting the strengths and constraints of each platform.

The project was, in its essence, about designing the platform every future feature would build on.

Creating an account was only the beginning.

Returning on a trusted device, signing in from a new phone, recovering an account, expiring sessions, enabling biometrics or deciding whether to trust a device all introduced different questions and different user expectations.

Rather than designing each scenario independently, I mapped them as one connected system. That made it easier to keep the experience consistent while reducing repeated design decisions as new scenarios appeared.

This also made conversations with engineering much easier. We were discussing one model instead of ten separate flows.

Designing how individual screens worked together took much thought.

The new platform wasn't being rebuilt screen by screen. Dashboard, markets, watchlists, portfolio and trading all needed to work as one connected experience.

I looked for shared interaction patterns that could reduce learning as users moved through the product. Navigation, layouts, empty states and actions followed the same principles, making different parts of the platform feel familiar without becoming identical.

That approach also made future work easier.

On native apps, biometric access could rely on the device. On PWA, the same promise needed a fallback when the browser could not recognise or trust the device in the same way. The interaction changed by platform, but the security model still had to make sense as one experience.

Some directions were clear, others intentionally broad. Build a modern trading experience. Explore AI. Position the product somewhere between simple investing and professional trading.

Those statements defined where the product should go, but not how users would get there.

My role was to turn those ambitions into concrete product decisions. That meant understanding what users were trying to achieve, what the business wanted to offer and what could realistically be built within the scope of the project.

Sometimes that meant challenging the first idea.

Instead of asking where AI should appear, I started by asking what problem AI could solve for traders.

Several dashboard, search and AI ideas remained concepts while authentication became the immediate priority. Establishing a secure way into the product mattered more than making the future platform appear complete on paper.

FXCM was designed for web, PWA, iOS and Android from the beginning. That meant balancing consistency with platform expectations rather than simply reusing the same interface everywhere.

Shared patterns helped create a familiar experience across the product, while interactions, navigation and native behaviours were adapted to feel natural on each platform.

The Design System provided the common language, but each platform still needed to respect the way people already used their devices.

The goal was a product that felt familiar wherever users accessed it.