Project Overview
ABOUT
Garanti BBVA is a Turkish financial services company and the second largest private bank in Turkey, offering multiple financial services along with mobile app for private banking transactions.
MY ROLE
Before going into details, I would like to mention that I have omitted confidential information in this case study, yet this presentation is more detailed than the web version.
Our task is to improve our mobile app, particularly to enhance home page usability and tracking of financial state by reducing the time taking to view the screen of transactions and the cognitive load for the users.
MY ROLE
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User research (surveys and interviews)
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Analysis of the user research
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Concept Design brainstorming
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Design of the Mid-Fi and Hi-Fi prototypes
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Keeping the Design Library unified & consistent while adding necessary items
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Communication with the stakeholders
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Presentation of the progress and the solutions to the stakeholders
DETAILS
Tools: Figma | Figjam | Miro | Google Forms | Maze | Card Sorting
Methodology: Design thinking in an agile environment
BACKGROUND
Home Page and Onboarding/KYC are two vital domains in Fintech products which are most of the time starting points of financial management journeys for users.
In the matter of home page, it is very important to help users feel that they have the control over their assets, view their habits & history and notified about the status of their transactions and activities.
Considering the the fact based on the recent researches that the attention span of the common users are decreasing, meaning the time users spend understanding a specific screen or a product was significantly shortened. Therefore design of home page in mobile banking app gains more importance.
At the same time, according to Signicat’s latest survey, The Battle to Onboard, 68% of consumers have abandoned a financial services application in 2021, which is up from 63% in 2020.
The two key reasons for doing so were the longer-than-anticipated length of the application process and the large amount of personal information required. Despite there are some practices to tackle these issues such as Digitalization & Automatization of the process; Splitting onboarding into multiple single steps; Using visuals; Optimizing friction; onboarding remains as a challenge.
The Challenge
We were given the task to work on our home page and improve based on the current issues. Therefore, the design team and the other stakeholders decided to organize a workshop including a business, market and user research, defining the problems and finding opportunities, which are followed by several sprints to achieve our goal.
1. Reduce the user tickets/complains/known issues related to home screen.
2. Make reading, understanding and taking actions simple related to transactions.
Business
Based on the costumer reviews, reports and complaints, a number of issues and insights with the current screen were highlighted and prioritized as follows:
1. Unclear Transaction Status
Transaction status is not clear, whether it is completed, pending, on-hold or it is already deduced or added on the balance.
2. Low Readability at
Transaction Listing
It is not easy to read/understand what the transaction is refer to, regarding the company, client, merchant or cash transactions etc.
Design Process
We do not always have enough time or resources to follow the ideal design methodology detailed to the every little step. We do not have time to extensive user research or create a empathy map or user journey, but it is still beneficial to follow the basic steps such as understanding, empathizing, finding the problem, do assumptions and find potential solutions and test.
Business Perspective
When there is an issue occurs, costumers mostly contact our support services via phone or message, which we use to understand and draw a picture of common user problems. We analyze their complaints, tickets and sort the issues by categories which gives us insight on their needs and our products.
Later, we use these insights to prioritize changes and improvements, in order to do that, we pull off the top issues. So that we figure pain points out which we see as opportunity.
#1 Cluttered Transaction History
It is not easy to read/understand what the transaction is refer to, regarding the company, client, merchant or cash transactions etc.
#2 No Info about Transaction Status
Transaction status is not clear, whether it is completed, pending, on-hold or it is already deduced or added on the balance.
#3 Balance Status
User cannot understand whether the balance is updated by the pending transactions.
Competitor Analysis
To prepare users for their initial encounter with our product, familiarity-building can be useful. They feel in charge and secure enough to navigate with confidence and handle problems on their own when they are aware of essential actions, employing standardized gestures, and arranging content in a way that is comfortable for consumers to absorb. Therefore, it is important to look common practices, behavioral patterns and systems. We looked into other mobile apps and examined how they provide.
#1 The provision of additional data to users, encompassing transaction dates, locations, currency conversion rates, and transaction categories, enhances their ability to navigate effectively and instills the feeling that they have complete knowledge and control over the given information.
#2 Information displayed on home pages:
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Date
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Location
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Name
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Tags
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Status
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Category
User Research
After understanding the business needs in more detail, and conducting competitor analysis, we continued with user research by doing interviews and prototype walkthrough with 5 users, and sending out some surveys to our channels and user database.
We asked users questions regarding their interaction with the app about features, needs, painpoints, expectations etc. as well as more detailed information regarding the transactions and home page and relevant information and actions on the particular page.
We asked them about features, functions and information that they would like to see at transactions and home page.
We also wanted them to prioritize these functionalities in order to figure out the priorities.
#1 Location, time and real time status are important for most of the users. If labels and further information is included, it is even better.
#2 Visuals help users to associate. They like to see logos, icons and other visuals to help them perceive more clear and faster. They also find visuals and graphics more trendy and contemporary.
#3 They want to see the details of the transactions such as time, category, name, amount and status. They want relevant actions are accusable
“When I come across a charge I don't recognize, I promptly access the transaction to gain a better understanding, especially if I'm uncertain or require additional details, which is most common when it comes to ATM withdrawals.”
“It is great to see logos and names of the entities on the transactions. It looks more neat and understandable and it is way easy to associate with visuals. It makes it easier to remember.”
“I would like to see easily where and when by whom the transaction is done for, otherwise it is a bit difficult to remember all those details and category of the transaction is also a great help.”
Define
We placed the gathered information into Notion separating the qualitative and quantitative data, and sorted them.
We looked for patterns, labels, key words, in order to sensitize the research and find problems.
After completing surveys and interviews, we sanitize and categorize the information and gather outcomes under a few titles. From the answers of our users, we found the following
1. Details of the Transaction.
Details such as time, location, status of the transaction can be shown to the users in a efficient and clear way.
2. Accessibility of Transaction Info
The transaction information bar can be touched/clicked directly on the screen, which leads to that particular transaction details.
3. Readability and Visibility of Companies
Users want to be able to easily read the company/merchant name, see related visuals.
New List of Transactions
The list of transactions can be easily viewed now with relevant logos, status indications, clear names of the parties, while keeping it simple.
Before
After
Transaction Status, Logo & Name
Status of the transaction is displayed under the Name and Logo.
New Transaction Details & Features
Location, time and date are added to the transaction detail along with tags and further financial details.
New features such as "Allocation options" and "Splitting the bill" added.
New Features
New features such as "Allocation options" and "Splitting the bill" added.
Location
Conclusion
Take-aways
Financial topics are quite sensitive and complex issues in various aspects like privacy, security or technology and at different scales such as individual or institutional and legal etc. While it is a matter relevant to everyone, every individual has different habits and expectation and perception.
The industry is enormous and the users are millions. This being the case, there is no limit for products, features and functions to be offered. Besides, evolving technology continues to bring new opportunities to the services and products.
Yet, due to complex nature of the finance, every action, feature and function is connected to countless micro services, not only socially but especially technically such as legal compliances as well as backhand and database issues.
Therefore, understanding the potentials, constrains, opportunities and complexities of it is quite important.
As a small part of digital financial products, private mobile banking alone is also very complex. There are many different user profiles so that various needs, painpoints, expectations as well as potentials and room to develop.
It showed us there are many problems to solve and features and solutions to offer. However, it also showed that it is quite challenging to take all these dependencies and limitations into equation.
It seems the development will continue to be fruitful. There will be other solutions will be provided to users by industry and the professionals, while it remains challenging.
Next Steps
#1 Validate: Test, & Iterate, Test & Iterate, Test&.... (Maze, Figma Walkthrough, AB
#2 Prepare for handoff, check consistency, make sure material coming from design library,
#3 Perform QA on Staging Environment.
#4 Compare against business metrics (KPIs and Support Tickets)
#5 Numerous features demanded by the users. These features to be verified by business goals, prioritized and produced
Further more...
This case study was followed by other sprints, and project cycles. Yet another significant work done by team was on KYC/Onboarding flow (Keeping the balance between regulatory compliance and customer experience (CX) as a fintech is no easy feat) which was based on certain industry standards and best UX
Practices as follows:
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Digitalization
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Automation
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Split onboarding into multiple single steps will make the process much more bearable.
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Use visual graphics to reduce complexity by presenting financial information visually with graphics.
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Add the right amount of friction In fintech, however, a certain level of friction is often required.