New layout is just not it

Hi guys,

Thank you all for the meaningful feedback! I’ll explain the reasoning behind this change.

We discovered that many of our users who own multiple ETFs issued by the same company (e.g. iShares) are having difficulty differentiating them. That’s because the logos of these ETFs match, and their names are pretty long and, in most cases, also fairly similar. This makes the symbol (ticker) one of the best ways to identify an ETF.

We brainstormed ways to mitigate this, such as adding an additional label to display the ticker, adding a badge displaying the ticker in the logo image, and others. Unfortunately, they all added too much clutter and visual noise to the investment list. We’re actively trying to avoid this because visual noise induces cognitive load, which is one of the worst enemies of any user interface.

We decided to take a step back and look at the big picture again. We questioned the value of every label on the investment item and realized that since we introduced fractional shares, the ‘number of shares’ label has become less relevant. Most of our users are now “investing money” rather than buying “numbers of shares”. And most of their portfolios look like this:
image

We decided that displaying the ticker brings better value to the portfolio list over long strings of digits which are hard to read in any case (1.2345678)

That being said, it is possible that knowing the number of shares you own on the portfolio level is very useful to you, and we’re missing something. We would appreciate it if you share with us your use case.

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