Hi everyone,
I’m building a portfolio tracking application and I’m currently working on the flow for manually adding assets (e.g., stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, etc.).
At the moment, when a user wants to add a stock, they click “Add Asset” and I make an API call that returns the first 50 biggest assets as per their marketcap. These are displayed in a popup window, and the user then selects the desired asset before being taken to a second screen where they enter additional details (quantity, purchase price, date, etc.).
While this works, the experience feels a bit clunky and disconnected.
What I’d like to achieve is a more seamless experience similar to many modern finance apps, where the user starts typing a stock symbol or company name (e.g., AAPL or Apple), and the field dynamically displays relevant matches in a dropdown/autocomplete list directly below the input. The user can then select the correct asset and continue filling out the form without navigating through multiple popups (see picture below from an existing app).
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How do you typically handle large asset universes (thousands of stocks, ETFs, funds, etc.)?
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Do you query the API on every keystroke, or use a different strategy?
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Are there any UX pitfalls or best practices I should be aware of when designing this asset search experience?
In the picture below, the list is refined after each keystroke without pressing Enter. That would be awesome to have the same system but I don’t know what’s the best approach.
