Building Freetrade
Using lint rules to prevent bugs
Principal Software Engineer, Alex Curran, shares more about our process to prevent bugs as we build our mobile apps.
22/1/2021
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Alex Curran
Building Freetrade
Principal Software Engineer, Alex Curran, shares more about our process to prevent bugs as we build our mobile apps.
22/1/2021
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Alex Curran
Building Freetrade
Principal Data Engineer Benen Cahill shares our process for data here at Freetrade.
13/1/2021
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Benen Cahill
Building Freetrade
Including some big name S&P 500 companies
21/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Software Engineer Theo Gregory shares how we use serverless to speed up deployment.
17/12/2020
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Theodore Gregory
Building Freetrade
Senior Product Manager, Jani Kiilunen, shares how we work with the Freetrade community to build the product
17/12/2020
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Jani Kiilunen
Building Freetrade
Including SAP, Credit Suisse, Ryanair, Trivago
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Brand new for Plus members
6/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Head of Engineering, Invest, Tim Drew, shares how we scale our platform using Cloud Firestore
21/12/2020
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Timothy Drew
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Software Engineering Manager Rokey Ge shares his virtual onboarding experience.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
A big improvement to Free Share is here.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
See how Freetrade compares to other brokers.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Senior Software Engineer Jimmy Thompson takes you through the three layers of the Freetrade app
10/12/2020
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Building Freetrade
Gold miners, Twinkies, McDonald's and more.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
A new limit of £25,000 for US stocks.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Including fixed income, investment-grade and government bonds.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade VP Product Duncan Leslie on vision, strategy and measuring success.
10/12/2020
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Duncan Leslie
Building Freetrade
Market cap, dividend yield, and P/E ratio are here.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Compare your performance against a global benchmark
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
Everything we plan to add to your app before the holidays.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade engineer Simon Poole talks about overcoming some serverless infrastructure challenges.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
From Papa John's to Zambian cattle farmers, we've added a wide array of new stocks to the Freetrade universe
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Talent Sourcer, Isabelle Atunrase, shares why we should all celebrate Black History Month, and some of the ways we’re getting involved here at Freetrade.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Our biggest addition of ETFs yet.
10/12/2020
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Product Managers Anant Sangar and Glenn Drawbridge have been busy working on limit orders and SIPPs. Here, they chat through how use User Story Mapping.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
More of what you want.
10/12/2020
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Software Engineer Luke Smith talks about the nuts and bolts of our brokerage platform
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Introducing your expanded stock universe.
10/12/2020
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
More ways to measure your portfolio performance
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
It’s now even easier to add money to your Freetrade account
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Product Manager Glenn Drawbridge shares his story.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Find out what's inside, and request your invite.
10/12/2020
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Duncan Leslie
Building Freetrade
Over 100 new stocks, including Kodak, La-Z-Boy, Tiffany & Co, and Crocs.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Amy joins Freetrade as our first Head of People.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
100 stocks inc. Avis, Tripadvisor, Goodyear, AMC Entertainment, Denny’s
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
The first of many additions to order types.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
75 new stocks including Ericsson, Yelp, Gfinity, Youdao
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Country-specific ETFs, and stocks from Wendy’s to Columbia
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
100 brand new stocks and ETFs are here
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
This week's 100 new stocks and ETFs might be the best batch yet.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Ferrari, Honda, Canadian Railway, United Airlines, Canadian banks, ETFs, and more
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
You can now own a piece of Ed Sheeran
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Cannabis companies have arrived
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
The former entrepreneur will be Freetrade’s non-executive director
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Find out more about how Free Share works
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
250 new US stocks have landed
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
You can now invest in a slice of US companies
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
Meet the person responsible for making Freetrade look cool
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Freetrade does not provide investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice. The value of investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than your original investment. Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).
Copyright © 2020 Freetrade, All rights reserved. The Apple logo is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
Made with 🍩 in London.
Principal Product Designer Caitlin Rich shares her top reads to help inspire good design and keep user experience front of mind.
I'm sure any designer can relate to those days where things are just not clicking into place.
Perhaps the obvious solution feels overly complicated, a round of user testing leaves you scratching your head or a project you've poured your heart into is going to take months to build (that the roadmap just can't spare).
Here is a list of the most significant books I've read at various points of my career that have helped me push through these days.
If you need support flipping a difficult problem on its head or a reminder of the basic principles of design which may have been temporarily forgotten, these reads should get you through.
Understanding comics
A very clever comic book all about comics, though its real value is its teachings on how we comprehend visual language.
While this book is directly related to comics, there is so much that can be applied to interface design.
It provides brilliant insight into how our brains interpret (or misinterpret) visual cues and how these cues can be as equally important as words.
The Design of Everyday Things
Just as the book above helps decipher visual language on a page, The Design of Everyday Things focuses on how visual language affects our interactions with the world around us.
It stresses how human error can rarely be solely blamed, and usually occurs as a result of poor design.
Norman picks apart his frustration with doors that are unclear if you should push or pull, fridge controls that result in you unintentionally freezing food and expensive washing machines with multiple functions that are left unused due to confusion.
While first published in 1988, the revised 2013 edition introduces how these concepts relate to the digitised environments we all know, hate and love.
Alchemy
Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense is a humorous read about how some product, marketing and design choices don't make rational sense, but for some reason, just work.
For example, how did RedBull dominate the soft drinks industry by introducing a drink that tastes worse than Coke or Pepsi but is priced eight or nine times higher?
While this book is aimed at advertisers and marketers, it highlights the importance of thinking outside the box when it comes to user and customer experience.
Sometimes what seems the most obvious solution is not the best course of action.
The Mom Test
One of the most common pitfalls in user research is asking questions that lead a participant to answer in line with what you want them to say, rather than what is really in their head.
"The mom test" is about structuring questions in a way that even your mum will tell you if an idea is terrible, rather than the usual; "that's nice dear, we believe in you".
It teaches you how to avoid accidentally pitching ideas to your customers and how to dig into the facts behind what they are saying, ignoring the compliments and opinions.
Sprint
Detailing the "sprint" process used at Google Ventures, this book provides step by step instructions on how to come up with and validate ideas in just five days.
Breaking each day down into a set of activities, it allows you to define the problem you are trying to solve, get input from a range of people across the business, narrow these down with stakeholders involved, prototype the solution in the simplest way, and get feedback from your customers.
In reality, half the book should be dedicated to just how to clear your team's and CEO's calendars for a week, though there are some great ideas for workshops and proof that you can get a lot done in very little time.
The Art of Looking Sideways
This giant coffee table book is not one to read cover to cover (seriously, it's huge), though perfect to pick up and flick through when you've found yourself butting against a creative block.
There is no linear story or narrative of any kind, just a visual feast of pictures, graphic design, colours, quotes, fonts, photographs, poems, musings, and notes.
Every time you pick it up, you'll find something fascinating that you haven't seen before.
Deep work
Not directly design-related, though this book helps you bring out your most productive self when tackling complex problems.
In a world filled with Slack, emails, meeting requests, Zoom and constant notifications, the book makes us wonder how we get anything done at all.
If you ever needed to be convinced to clear an afternoon of meetings out of your calendar for deep focus time, this will do it.
It provides a good set of rules to live by, to get the most out of your workdays, and really does inspire you to make big changes to how you schedule your calendar.
If you're tackling a big project and feel like you're not making significant progress, this will help.
Lean startup
The must-read for anyone new to working with startups, this book takes learnings from lean manufacturing and applies it to startups and digital products.
It talks through the importance of validating your ideas as quickly as possible, building the most lightweight option to help you learn, and iterating often.
It inspires you to strip features down to a minimum viable product (MVP) and get them into the hands of your customers rather than implementing the "perfect" solution, which often turns out to be not so perfect the more feedback you get along the way.
My favourite quote that will always stick with me is, "Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs."
Important information
This should not be read as personal investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice. This article has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and is considered a marketing communication.
When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).