Many people nowadays prefer to use online banking platforms over traditional banking due to several reasons such as saving time, easy transactions, ease of use, etc.
The prevalent reasons among users led digital banking applications to increase the overall demand.
I endeavoured to ascertain the pain point to gain a better understanding of users and meet the requirements to solve common digital banking problems.
About the project:
Ace Bank is a non-existent digital mobile banking platform. I aimed to create a mobile banking application with both pleasant and easy to use for users. Additionally, I tried to include the most demanding technologies such as fingerprint, face ID, and AI-supported operations to make the application available to everyone.
I want to clarify the fact that AI technology has a comprehensive usage for banking operations, therefore I narrowed down my scope to voice assistants within the app and chatbots for customer engagement and service.
Please click on images for high resolution.
Project duration:
September 2021 to December 2021 (3 months)
September 2021 to December 2021 (3 months)
My Role:
UX design and research of Ace Bank Mobile Application design from conception to high-fidelity prototype.
Tools:
Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and Miro
Solving Common Problems:
I conducted informal interviews with 10 participants to be able to determine the initial problems regarding mobile digital banking. Later, based on user answers I gathered the key points below and I ask myself,
How can I...
-Integrate the latest technology into the user’s life to make the user experience as intuitive as possible.
-Detect and improve the user pain points while performing digital banking operations.
-Provide a simple and fast registration process
-Reduce the numerical complexity, especially for transaction history.
The Process:
Here is the iterative design process:
Domain Research:
I tried to find the most commonly used technologies in banking, the most used features, new updates of popular banking apps, and user reviews to understand what kind of problems users are going through while using a digital banking app.
Here are the key findings:
• Cardless ATM withdrawal has a high demand preferably via QR code among digital banking apps
• Voice assistants play a tremendous role for customers to enhance their customer experience
• Users prefer easy, fast, and secure login which is crucial to building trust for the app
Competitor Analysis:
I curated the top 5 digital mobile banking applications that have the highest ratings on iOS app ratings along with their most outstanding features. I gathered valuable information from websites such as Business Insider and Forbes.
Personal Interviews:
After completing the domain research and competitor analysis I was able to ask more meaningful and specific questions while conveying the interviews. I tried to conduct interviews with mobile bank app users. I asked demographic questions along with functional questions to 10 people later to create my persona.
These were the key findings of the interview:
• Users want to feel secure whenever entering the app.
• Users want to perform fast payments or withdrawals.
• Users worry about card theft and they want instant card cancellation solutions.
• Users feel positive about using new technologies while performing banking operations on mobile.
Gathering Insights...
I grouped and organized all the information in the affinity diagram to create persona and empath maps after collecting the qualitative and quantitative data.
Creating Persona
I created a primary persona to be able to understand the pain points and goals of the user with the help of previously collected information. Therefore, the persona information helped in the creation of an empathy map and user journey map.
Building Empathy
After creating the persona, in order to be able to understand the user and to focus on what we know about the persona visually, I created an empathy map.
Walking with Users' Shoes
Considering all the information I gathered so far, I created a user scenario while interacting with the mobile banking app.
Scenario:
Jason wants to sign in to his bank account via the banking mobile app. First, he notices the greeting screen with the account name along with a picture. He feels more confident after seeing his account before signing in. Then, he proceeds to the Face ID option and successfully enters the app.
The first thing he sees is his bank account balance along with quick operations followed by a transaction history of his account. When he checks the main page, he easily understands the transfers with a clean interface supported by visual icons.
Then, he selects the fast QR payment option from the sequence of the quick options. He proceeds to the QR reading screen to pay. After scanning the QR, the payment was done quickly with a minimal number of actions. After that point, he feels secure and happy to perform his payment actions.
After some time, Jason realized that he lost his card and panics immediately. He thinks about how to cancel his card and proceeds to the instant cancellation navigation option and performs cancellation. He feels relaxed after seeing the positive feedback on the screen indicating the cancellation is successfully completed.
I created a user journey mapping based on the previous user scenario.
MVP & Feature Prioritization
After considering the user scenario and previous interview and research data, I prioritized the features using MVP. Prioritizing features helps me to build a roadmap for the project. For this case, I tried to Focus on the acceptance of the users.
User Flow Diagram
I created a user flow diagram based on the previous user scenario.
Information Architecture
I created the IA based on the previous user flow and previous data gathering.
Wireframing the Solution
Login Alternative Wireframe
Login Alternative Wireframe
Account Wireframe
Side Menu Wireframe
QR Wireframe
Login Option Wireframe
Info Wireframe
Forgot Password Wireframe
High Fidelity Prototype
Below are some captures from the high-fidelity design. Click the button in "Improvements and Future Considerations" section to see the full project.
Greeting Screen
Account
Side Bar
Cancel Card
Voice AI Help
SMS Code
Enter Code
Approval Message
QR
Warning
Validating the Designs
I conduct the usability testing with 4 people who have a closer profile to the persona. The testing phase is conducted in two phases: The first one was about the general mobile app questions and in the second one, users were given tasks and as a moderator, I noted their success in completion. The first phase questions are given below:
1- What parts of the web/mobile app did you like the most? Why?
2- What did you think of the interface?
3- What do you think about the way features and information were presented?
4- Why will you keep using this web/mobile app? Why will you not?
Findings summary of phase1:
• Some users wanted to see their profile information on the greeting screen along with their picture and name to build trust
• Most of the users like the idea of multiple sign-in options being accessible on the greeting screen
• All of the users are happy with the interface color, navigation, and typography
• The card balance screen was the most liked feature of the application
The requested tasks are listed below:
1- Can you find sign-in?
1.1 How did you find this task? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
2-Can you find the cancel card option?
2.1 How did you find this task? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
3-Can you observe the card activity?
3.1 How did you find this task? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
4- Can you use the QR payment option?
4.1 How did you find this task? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
Findings summary of phase2:
• Most of the users successfully completed the tasks given within similar time intervals except for finding the card-cancelling option since the feature took more time to complete
• The difficulty rates were recorded as low on average
Improvements and Future Considerations
After finishing the user testing, for the betterment of the user experience, I decided to focus on improving some features. The most outstanding points I concluded were:
• The difficulty of finding the card-cancelling option
• The lack of user account information on the greeting screen
After careful consideration, I made some changes accordingly:
-I put the cancelling option on the account page so that users can see the urgent option in the first place whenever they open the application.
-I also added an account picture and name information on the login screen.
Account After Improvement
Login After Improvement
Sidebar After Improvement
This project process has contributed to my banking knowledge and digital banking applications. Also, during the usability testing and user research, the user feedback and user information collected from other sources have tremendous contributions to improving my design experience.
