Google Finance UX/UI Fail

Google recently upgraded its Finance App to offer a better experience to users. The new desktop interface offers a more expansive layout than the previous look and now includes AI support. However, it fails miserably when considered from a UI/UX perspective. Let's take a look at a few of the problems in each of the three panels in the new format.

The Left Panel

In this left panel, a summary of portfolios displays along with every single item in a watchlist and a section entitled "Equity Sectors."

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise closed. Why? Screen real estate is a valuable commodity.

Also, why only Equity Sectors?  Where are the equally important asset classes: Fixed Income, Commodities, Real Estate, Foreign Exchange, and Cash Equivalents? This one piece adds unnecessary noise to the view. It can be collapsed, but only temporarily.

The Center Panel

The default display shows announcements, major indices, the US Market Summary, latest news, dates for upcoming earnings reports, most active stocks, and daily gainers and losers.

Selecting items from a watchlist displays more detailed information about a particular stock in this panel.  Choosing a watchlist expands the left panel, overriding this center panel.  That works nicely.

Portfolio selection does not work the same.  Choosing a portfolio displays the contents of the portfolio and certain details in this center panel.  These detail columns can be customized to add more data to the view as well.  It should probably work the same as watchlist selection though.

When viewing a portfolio with more than 10 market items, it is impossible to view the associated data without continually scrolling back and forth and up and down, while struggling to remember the position of a specific item in a grid with no reference points. A side-to-side scroll bar is available at the bottom, but it is an empty and useless gesture for large portfolios.

The Right Panel

Welcome to the new "Research" Panel, or more accurately described as the introduction and intrusion of AI into your portfolio. 

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise pushed out of sight.

The default view is a welcome message encouraging you to ask questions, of which a few random examples are provided. One can also ask it to perform analysis on what is visible in the middle panel or query markets in general. 

In Chrome, with Gemini already available, it is redundant at best.

Tasks can be executed from this panel too. In fact, Google now forces the user to use this panel for any updates to their portfolios. There is no other choice. If the intent is to use this platform to track an investment portfolio, one is stuck using AI.

It is a helpless and useless AI too.  

Most tasks associated with a watchlist are more easily performed from buttons already on screen.

Managing a portfolio using this Research Panel AI offers a new level of frustration. 

One can no longer simply add information to a portfolio as they did before. Google now forces the user to request that AI complete the task, taking the simplest process and pushing it down the path of unnecessary complexity.  What once only took a few keystrokes has been transformed into an argument over trade dates, pricing, and true transaction amounts. 

Who has time for this?

If I have to enter everything into a box, just give me all the fields required and segregated to do that.   At least give me a means of manually editing what Research Panel AI incorrectly positioned so I do not have spend an excessing amount of time arguing with it.

Beyond simple trades that it failed to execute properly, testing uncovered things the Research Panel refused to recognize that standard Gemini identified easily. In one instance, prior to Google pushing the major enhancement enabling users to sort by Ticker, the Research Panel was requested to take the columns from a portfolio presented in the center panel and redisplay the list with only the columns for Ticker and Total Gain/Loss, sorted in Ticker alphabetical order. The Research Panel insisted that the data did not exist. Gemini quickly displayed the requested information without argument.

Additionally, in the conversion to this new build, developers failed to ensure that data migrated correctly.  A lot of users report that daily tracking of their portfolio is lost forever.  Google simply dropped the transaction dates of many portfolio items.  As a consolation, the Research Panel AI recommends that you simply add those back for each and every stock.  It obviously is completely clueless as to the time that could take for large portfolios that have been in place for an extended period, with multiple transactions.

Thanks, Google.  Again, who has time for this?

Final Thoughts

I wish I could say I that I do not understand why Google refuses to enable manually entry as an option.

The answer is all too clear though.

They have spent a lot of money on this, and you will use it, you will like it, and you will work for free helping to train it up.

AI should be an additive tool for deep research or complex queries.  It should not be a mandatory gatekeeper for simple 2-second data entry forms.

Additionally, I will remain forever confused by those who continue to insist that Google is some sort of UI/UX expert.  They are anything but that, and this is one of many glaring examples.

Google did do one thing extremely valuable in this rebuild.  They helped me realize the usefulness of my personal brokerage platform.  Those guys spent serious time and money understanding UX.  The worst thing I encounter there is a login with two-factor authentication every time.