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Blog - What to Expect at DigitalXChange ’18

What to Expect at DigitalXChange ’18

DigitalXChange ’18 is less than a month away. We’ve packed a lot into the one-and-a-half day event – with more keynotes, content, and speakers than ever before. We are committed to upping the ante on last year’s event and bringing you only the best at the premier digital quality conference.

Here is a sample of what you can expect at DigitalXChange ‘18.

(From left: Julie Ask, John Hashimoto, Asim Husain, Akash Garg)

The Keynotes

DigitalXChange ‘18 features keynote presentations from some of the world’s most innovative visionaries operating in the digital space. Applause CEO Doron Reuveni will kick off the event, followed by technologist Tom Wujec and Forrester’s Julie Ask. Day one of the conference closes with a keynote from popular YouTuber and film director Casey Neistat. The keynotes keep coming on day two with a presentation on emotional intelligence from Affectiva founder and CEO Rana el Kaliouby.

The Topics

Sessions with digital leaders aren’t just reserved for the mainstage. Our breakout showcases, TechTalk presentations, and panel discussions feature spokespeople from some of the world’s biggest brands. These speakers will explore topics that move the needle, including – crowd testing best practices, test automation, designing for voice and AI, optimizing for omnichannel, and more. Here is a preview of some of the sessions you will find at DigitalXChange ‘18.

What the Next Decade Holds for Digital

Artificial intelligence, voice recognition, and augmented reality are changing the tenor of user experience for media companies.

Testing Tips to Crush Shopping Cart Abandonment

In this TechTalk, three leading eCommerce players weigh in on the fixes you can make to crush shopping cart abandonment.

Winning with Test Automation

Two leaders in test automation will discuss the latest trends and what to expect in the next 5 years.

Improving Customer Experiences with Real-World Feedback

This panel of usability experts will explain how they use real-world feedback to build web and mobile apps that their customers love.

The Speakers

Last week, we announced new speakers from Citi, CNN, Bespoken, and Applause. Now, we’re excited to announced even more great participants:

Rajiv Pant, CTO & CPO, The Wall Street Journal

Rajiv Pant is Chief Product & Technology Officer of The Wall Street Journal, responsible for Product, Design, and Engineering. He reports jointly to the WSJ editor-in-chief and to Dow Jones corporate. Previously, as CTO of The New York Times, Rajiv led the successful development and delivery of dozens of acclaimed mobile and web products over four years. Earlier, he headed up digital technology at Conde Nast for four years, where he managed multiple successful teams including Reddit. His leadership experience includes CTO of Cox Media Group, VP Engineering at Knight Ridder, and roles at startups. He has experience building and supervising small teams to 400+ employees. He received several prestigious awards during his career including being honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2014.

Phil Caswell, Technical Program Manager, Audible

Phil Caswell is a technical program manager who supports the quality assurance organization at Audible. He has spent his entire career at Audible and Amazon, 17 years in total, holding roles in vendor relations, program management, quality assurance, engineering, support operations, and audio production. One of Phil’s key roles is managing the Applause pipeline which supports several teams within Audible’s quality assurance organization, as well as teams in UX and engineering.

Sumeet Mandloi, Engineering Director, Dow Jones

Sumeet Mandloi is an experienced professional with a career spanning nearly 20 years in quality assurance, test automation, and product and release management with leading companies like UBS, Citibank, and TD Ameritrade. Sumeet currently serves as engineering director at Dow Jones, where he supports faster releases, improves quality, and creates brand value for world-renowned products like The Wall Street Journal, Marketwatch, Barrons, etc. In his role, Sumeet built effective and efficient Engineering organizations which focus on product quality and close collaboration between Product, Engineering, and Design teams. He is an avid speaker at multiple conferences and was instrumental in driving a team of engineers to build a Behavior Driven Test Harness using open-source technologies, which helped recognize Dow Jones as a finalist two years in a row at the European Testing Awards in the category of Quality Engineering.

Inge De Bleecker, Senior Director of User Experience, Applause

Inge De Bleecker has been designing and testing web, mobile, voice and multi-channel experiences for more than 20 years. She builds and leads UX teams and evangelizes customer experience principles throughout organizations. Her mantras are “design for everyone” and “test early and often.”

The Networking

Attending DigitalXChange is more than just a ticket – it’s an investment in yourself – directly connecting you with technology innovators from leading brands who deliver digital experiences that matter.

The world’s top digital minds will be at DigitalXChange…will you?

Apps targeting young people

Naturally, banks and online brokers are also increasingly offering mobile solutions for stock trading. However, this new group of fintech startups has a different structure than traditional providers. As international apps with social media appeal, they are aimed at a particularly young target group of 25- to 35-year-olds who want not only access to stock trading but also a new kind of user experience. It has become clear that accessibility and user-friendliness are key selling points for these new investment apps. For example, according to Bitkom’s Digital Finance Report 2020, 40% of respondents expressed the expectation that “smartphone apps’ ease of use for stock and securities transactions will enable more people to benefit from companies’ performances.”

In a nutshell, the easy access via smartphones makes these “neobrokers” so appealing. Clear design, community integration, and ease of entry has turned UI/UX into an actual product.

Special opportunities – special risks?

Many apps have little to no limit on how small a trade can be, making it possible to buy fractional shares. As mentioned, they charge very low fees — or none at all — and are available outside of regular trading hours. The apps clearly aim to lower the entry threshold for stock trading, and sometimes lure new users with free shares. On the flip side, the apps offer no or minimal investing advice, unlike traditional brokers. Consequently, purchasers must do their own research outside of the app, using articles, forums and social media. This aspect has raised suspicions in the German market. In the survey undertaken for the Bitkom Digital Finance Report referenced above, 69% of respondents stated that “an advisor’s input is absolutely key to making good investment decisions.” As a result, the separation of professional advisory services and the gamification of trading stocks carries certain risks, especially for inexperienced users.

Too much power?

The potential dynamics unleashed by direct market access were demonstrated in an interesting case study in January. Small investors coordinated a purchase of GameStop stock via Reddit to prevent a decline in the company’s value, on which hedge funds had speculated. In fact, the Reddit community’s actions were so successful that U.S. authorities are now investigating the possibility of market manipulation. Outrage erupted, however, when Robinhood simply suspended trading in GameStop shares at the height of the buying frenzy.

Ultimately, the neobroker did have a good reason for halting trading. The security it had deposited with clearinghouse DTCC was insufficient to match increased trading volume. However, this episode illustrates that some luster has fallen from the new market power of small investors: Even trading apps do not eliminate the intermediary function; they only replace it, sometimes with even more opaque conditions than before.

The outlook is promising

And yet, neobrokers are attracting young investors by reinventing the process of investing and stock trading. With pleasing designs and customer experiences geared toward millennials, these apps will be able to gain many users in the next few years. At that point, they will have to show that they can keep up with the momentum that they created. Users expect apps, acting as financial service providers and managers of highly sensitive data, to be error-free at all times and in all places – and rightly so. User trust and compliance with financial rules will play a crucial role in determining whether neobrokers will remain competitive as market penetration continues.

However, the new investment apps’ penetration of the DACH market is still at an early stage. Established providers, especially banking apps, may leverage the trend by incorporating a more attractive UX and simplified investment features into their existing apps. For example, a whitepaper from the Sparkassen Innovation Hub on the topic of changing values recommends “opening up products to small investment amounts” as well as “using a clear, appealing interface (UI), playful elements for data entry and maintenance, [and] the use of status and progress indicators to guide users through processes” to attract a new group of potential investors.

One thing is certain: The phenomenal growth of investment and trading apps, especially in Germany, could be a precursor to interesting developments in the coming years.

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Peter Basile
Peter Basile
VP of Marketing
Published On: September 5, 2018
Reading Time: 4 min
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