Tallarium – Real-Time Energy Trading UX

Connecting Bond Trading Efficiency with User-Centric Design (Algomi ALFA)

Role: Principal Product Designer

Company: Tallarium (London-based energy trading startup)

Industry: Fintech / Energy Trading (B2B SaaS)

Duration: Feb 2020 – Jun 2021

Team: PM, CTO, 2 front-end devs, 1 UX researcher, myself as lead designer

Tools: Figma, Notion, Jira, Loom, Whimsical

Platform: Desktop SaaS and internal tools for energy traders and brokers

Target Users: OTC energy traders and brokers in oil, gas, power markets

Business Challenge

Tallarium was building a data-rich platform to digitise OTC energy trading workflows, which are traditionally fragmented and spreadsheet-based. Early users found the platform unintuitive, cluttered, and hard to trust.

Goal: Design scalable UI foundations, improve trader confidence in the platform’s data and UX, and accelerate adoption across desks.

Discovery & Constraints

Key Issues Identified:

  • Traders mistrusted AI-suggested prices without transparency

  • UI lacked hierarchy; all signals were treated equally

  • Navigation between instruments (e.g., Brent Crude, Gas TTF) was clunky

Research Methods:

  • Shadowed energy traders for half-day sessions

  • Mapped workflows from Excel → Bloomberg → Slack back to the platform

  • Co-created wireframes with PMs to validate assumptions

  • Defined key UX jobs: price comparison, quote verification, multi-venue flow tracking

UX Strategy

Focused on designing for trader mental models — high-frequency scanning, trust-first UI, and low-friction keyboard flows.

Key Initiatives:

  1. Built a modular design system (foundational Atomic library in Figma)

  2. Designed custom price tiles, time-sensitive alerts, and filterable order streams

  3. Created a pattern for drill-down price discovery with embedded source trails

  4. Prioritised data density over whitespace (tested with trader eye tracking)

UX/UI Highlights

Outcomes & Impact

User confidence increased – traders cited the new tiles as “more intuitive” and “trustable” during onboarding interviews

  1. Platform usage grew by 40% across 3 desks in 3 months post-launch

  2. Design system adopted by engineering for future builds, reducing dev/design cycle time

  3. CEO and PM credited UX work with boosting trust during funding demos

Reflection & Learnings

“Traders are power users with no time for onboarding — the interface has to explain itself in a glance. Building trust isn’t about data—it’s about clarity, transparency, and respecting speed.”