Terminal
App
Web
Designing Option chain for 600,000 traders on Groww
Helping options traders make faster decisions by reducing context switching, visualizing key metrics, and creating a layered data experience.
About Groww
Groww is an India-based investing and trading platform, similar to Robinhood, serving millions of users and offering stocks, F&O, and other investment products.
Overview
Options traders work best when they can move quickly and spot patterns, but traditional option chains with endless tab-switching and hard-to-find data often slow them down and push them to look elsewhere.
This project focuses on streamlining the workflow for traders. By reducing unnecessary steps and focusing on clarity, we help traders stay in their flow and make decisions quickly.
Outcomes
Previously, Groww did not cater to professional traders. Redesigning the option chain met the needs of these traders & made Groww competitive in the advanced-trader segment.
14% increase
Orders from option chain
600,000+
Option chain MAU
My role
Redesigned Groww's options chain from the ground up, transforming a basic interface into a pro-grade trading experience over 12 months.
Mechanics of trading options
Options 101
An option is like a paid reservation or a "coupon" that gives you the choice to buy or sell something at a set price later, without forcing you to actually do it. If the price moves in your favour, you use your coupon to make a profit; if it doesn't, you just throw the coupon away and only lose the small amount you paid for it.
Why should you trade options? Traders use options for leverage, which lets them trade expensive stocks with a tiny "down payment" to potentially multiply their profits.
Trade options at a fraction of the cost
Anatomy of an option
Option chain is list of all options available to trade
Think of the Option Chain as the "Coupon Store Website" where you go to buy those specific coupons we talked about earlier. Instead of just one coupon being available, this store lists thousands of different coupons for the same concert ticket (the stock).
Here is how the "Coupon Store" (Option Chain) looks like.
Anatomy of option chain
Reading an option chain
Think of the market at 25,600 as a Tug-of-War battle. Traders first check the price (the rope's position) but then look at open interest (the number of players on each side) to predict the winner.
If the Call side has significantly more players (open interest) than the Put side, it creates a massive "human wall" that blocks the price from rising, signaling strong resistance. A trader makes a decision by checking the price & OI to determine whether they want to buy a call or a put.
Used to compare price & open interest of different options
Try trading!!!
Trading simulator built with cursor
Problem deep dive
#1 It is difficult to see price & open interest at the same time
Traders could view either price or open interest, but not both simultaneously. They had to switch tabs to view the other. This made it hard to quickly compare both values. Without both values visible at the same time, traders had to keep switching views, slowing the process and making it inconvenient.
Switching tabs
#2 Traders can’t see their positions on the option chain
After entering a trade, traders returning to the options chain have no way to easily see which contract they hold a position in. This can lead to mistakes if they place an order under the wrong contract.
Confusion due to lack of position marker
#3 Traders need Greeks data
Another major issue was the lack of Greeks data. Competitors like Dhan and Sensibull provided detailed Greeks, including Delta, Theta, Gamma and Vega, but Groww did not. This information is essential for professional options traders, who use Greeks to understand how option prices might change due to time decay or market movements.
Groww was lacking advanced tools
NPS survey trader feedback
TAKEAWAYS:
Traders had to switch between viewing the price or open interest, with no way to see both at once. This made it harder to compare key metrics and slowed down decision-making.
Traders can’t see their positions on the option chain.
Additionally, professional traders could not access Greeks data (Delta, Theta, Vega), making it challenging to analyze option behavior in depth.
Problem deep dive
#1 It is difficult to see price & open interest at the same time
Traders could view either price or open interest, but not both simultaneously. They had to switch tabs to view the other. This made it hard to quickly compare both values. Without both values visible at the same time, traders had to keep switching views, slowing the process and making it inconvenient.
Switching tabs
#2 Traders can’t see their positions on the option chain
After entering a trade, traders returning to the options chain have no way to easily see which contract they hold a position in. This can lead to mistakes if they place an order under the wrong contract.
Confusion due to lack of position marker
#3 Traders need Greeks data
Another major issue was the lack of Greeks data. Competitors like Dhan and Sensibull provided detailed Greeks, including Delta, Theta, Gamma and Vega, but Groww did not. This information is essential for professional options traders, who use Greeks to understand how option prices might change due to time decay or market movements.
Groww was lacking advanced tools
NPS survey trader feedback
TAKEAWAYS:
Traders had to switch between viewing the price or open interest, with no way to see both at once. This made it harder to compare key metrics and slowed down decision-making.
Traders can’t see their positions on the option chain.
Additionally, professional traders could not access Greeks data (Delta, Theta, Vega), making it challenging to analyze option behavior in depth.
Process & Ideation
Chain is made from it’s list items. Let’s focus on solving for that.
Each option list item has three parts: the call side, the put side, and the center strike price.
List item in option chain
While solving for toggling problem we realized that traders didn’t need the exact OI number. They just needed to quickly spot which strikes had the highest OI, so they could find key support or resistance levels. Instead of showing a complicated table view with lots of numbers we chose to simplify and visualize open interest.
Price & OI view
Open interest explorations
Position marker explorations
Second key challenge was figuring out how to show a trader’s positions for each contract in the option chain. The list item design we discussed earlier needed to include a way to display this information clearly.
Option chain with new open interest visualizations & positions marker
Exploring how to show greeks on option chain
Let’s focus on professional traders, who rely on more than just price and open interest data; they also use greeks to decide which options to trade and where to place their bets. Although they make up less than 10% of all option users, they generate 20% of the revenue. As professional traders, they place more orders than the average user.
Greek as a separate mode
Users could switch to Greeks mode and select which Greeks they wanted to see.
Flaw: Price is essential for taking a trade. In Greek mode, users could no longer see the option price, which made it difficult to make trading decisions.
All columns in one view
UI was packed with data and hard to use on a mobile device.
Constant movement of the central spine made the layout confusing and didn’t help users stay oriented.
Throughout the process, my key design principle was to keep the data presentation as clean and digestible as possible. Excessive textual data can quickly become cumbersome and overwhelming. This can separate Groww from it’s competitors.
Greeks and open interest together
Traders can enable Greeks using a toggle in the option chain header. This way, users who don't want to see Greeks can keep their view simple, while those who need detailed data can turn on the full column view whenever they want.
Toggle to see all column view
Solution
Option chain features a 1:1 mapped scroll
This allows traders to compare data across multiple columns. This setup enables quick, side-by-side comparison of all Greeks and open interest values for both calls and puts in a single view.
Compare in one glance
Swipe to snap the center column
Traders focused on buying either a call or a put option can simply swipe the center spine left or right to get a focused view of calls or puts. This industry-leading feature, unique among competitors, was highly appreciated by traders.
Spine can snap to left or right
Reduced size of header by 33%
Maximizing visible options in a single view is critical for traders, so I also focused on reducing the header footprint.
User data revealed that most traders work primarily with the current expiry rather than frequently switching between multiple expiries, so quick-toggle access wasn't a need. We consolidated expiry selection into a dropdown and simplified the controls to two toggles, Greek and Basket mode.
Header before vs after
Solution
Option chain features a 1:1 mapped scroll
This allows traders to compare data across multiple columns. This setup enables quick, side-by-side comparison of all Greeks and open interest values for both calls and puts in a single view.
Compare in one glance
Swipe to snap the center column
Traders focused on buying either a call or a put option can simply swipe the center spine left or right to get a focused view of calls or puts. This industry-leading feature, unique among competitors, was highly appreciated by traders.
Spine can snap to left or right
Reduced size of header by 33%
Maximizing visible options in a single view is critical for traders, so I also focused on reducing the header footprint.
User data revealed that most traders work primarily with the current expiry rather than frequently switching between multiple expiries, so quick-toggle access wasn't a need. We consolidated expiry selection into a dropdown and simplified the controls to two toggles, Greek and Basket mode.
Header before vs after
Before vs After
Before
After
The new chain design was simple yet layered. By default, the interface remained clean and allowed users to place orders quickly. Advanced users could enable Greek mode to access Greek data. This way, the option chain served both new and professional traders.
The new chain design was simple yet layered. By default, the interface remained clean and allowed users to place orders quickly. Advanced users could enable Greek mode to access Greek data. This way, the option chain served both new and professional traders.
Designed to scale
Multi select to create a basket
Option Chain’s basket mode allows users to select multiple options at once. Previously, checkboxes were used, but they created visual clutter. To maintain a clean interface, I replaced them with subtle buy and sell indicators.
Basket experience
Same design scales to web
Option chain on web
Option chain on trading terminal
What would I do differently?
#1 First time user experience
Many users had trouble enabling Greek mode, especially those who relied on absolute open interest (OI) numbers and couldn't easily find the feature.
#2 Customisability
If we can enable traders to personalize their option chain from the start, they wouldn't need to toggle modes or scroll through excess information.
#3 Interactions failed on low end devices
Many traders mentioned that the scroll & snapping experience became jittery due to performance issues with the option chain. Enabling Greek mode added even more data to render. As a result, the entire option chain interaction often failed on low-end devices.
Let's have coffee?
rakshit.design@gmail.com
Socials
Phone number
+1 (206)-571-4546
Blogs
Let's have coffee?
rakshit.design@gmail.com
Socials
Phone number
+1 (206)-571-4546
Blogs