Published in · 7 min read · Feb 6, 2018
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The innovative approach of financial UX Design Agency (UXDA) takes into account business and technological opportunities and focuses on the needs and behavioral patterns of users. UXDA aim is to make financial startups and digital banking interfaces customer-centered and frictionless. We have decade experience of serving dozens banks and FinTech startups from Europe and the United States and ready to reveal our financial design approach in this post.
by Alberts Pumpurs, Account Director and UX Expert of UX Design Agency
Down The Rabbit-Hole
Alice is only four years old, but she is already jumped into modern Rabbit-Hole of technology. When I was watching her, she took my smartphone, and launched camera app. In half an hour she overloaded phone memory with dozens of photos.
Imagine my surprise of how such a small kid figured it out. For guys in Cupertino it`s not a surprise, obviously, because they succeeded to made this feature deadly simple. Just open Camera app, tap Magic Button and that’s it. Think about it, from a little Magic Button a 4 year old gets happier than from an ice-cream, because it delivers breathtaking creative experience.
So, what do you think. could it be possible hundred years ago with manual camera like in the picture below?
And what about finance, are they dead-simple our days, and does they deliver delightful experience? Definitely not. There is a lot of work to do, but one of the main issues lies in our human nature.
According to scientists, 80% of consumer behavior is determined by ancient parts in human brains — our subconsciousness. Finance is an artificial concept that lies in Neocortex — our rational consciousness. That`s why we are not perfect with calculations and controlling our financial behavior.
As financial service architects, our mission is to raise consumers understanding about finance, by making it dead-simple. Similarly to a camera app for Alice.
This Hole Is Deeper Than You Imagine
Unfortunately not every service provider realizes this problem. Research shows significant gap in understanding customers. 81% of service providers believe they fully understand customer needs, but only 37% of clients agrees with that. It seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication.
That’s why 70% of online banking users use only 2 to 4 of their primary bank products. And that’s incredibly small number comparing to available products. Why? Because consumers do not understand value of other available products.
Actually it’s only a small part of overall customer experience, that makes direct impact on consumers loyalty. Statistics show that half of switched customers did it because of a bad experience.
Today’s consumers prefer to trust their phone, more than their banker. Tech companies bet on design user experience as part of value generating process instead of old-school marketing. As humans can`t deliver bright idea without human language, so technology can’t provide it`s value without design. And tech companies cracked it. They communicate, teach and gain customers through design as a language.
And now technology focuses on money. There is a technological revolution, and financial industry is no exception. World’s economy is rapidly increasing volume of electronic payments, which already is dominating. Major European banks HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Bank, DNB, Banco Santander, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays announced plans to close more than 1,000 branches.
Experts predict that by 2030 Sweden becomes the first country with completely cashless economy. We are moving extremely fast from cash society to digital finance only. And this changes everything.
Just look at fintech right now. Fintech startups noticed this window of opportunity to deliver innovative finance products. And now there are thousands of them, and they all have one thing in common — they have user-centred design thinking as main advantage.
And this is clearly seen in Appstore. Average rating for personal finance apps is near to 80, comparing with half less for banking apps.
Follow The White Rabit
So, what can be done? First of all, we have to clarify that having so many FinTech products put us in customer-centered economy.
And the only way to be successful is understanding customers and stepping into “Customer Shoes”. You can do it by making researches, interviews and polls to understand users pains and passions using financial service.
You also need to speak “Customer Language”. To learn it you have to discover users perceptions, cognitions, behaviours that allows to provide effective service design and taxonomy based on user psychology and patterns.
All of gathered insights should be packed into User Experience (UX) design. And we call it — “the Magic Button” experience.
Everyone is dreaming about the magic button, that solves any problem with single tap. Erase all those multi-field forms, remove complexity. You don’t want to disappoint Alice, when she becomes your customer, right?
In future, we have to move financial service complexity to the background, providing intuitive and dead-simple interface. We will not force users to fill out all those multi-step forms because we will are able to import all required info through APIs.
Curiouser And Curiouser!
And now let’s see few recommendations of how financial UX design can be used.
Start from a research:
- Find user pain points, that pains them when using financial service
- Prioritize their preferred tasks
- Discover worlds best practices
- “Paint” personal portrait of your end user
- Make interviews to find their motivations
Then put all of this in holistic step-by-step User Journey Map. It will show perfect User Experience that your service should deliver. And it will shape the design of your user interface.
After that, you can use Information Architecture, Wireframing and UI design methods to deliver simplicity and “magic” through your financial interface.
Going Into The Lovely Garden
So let’s check out few features engineering from our practice.
To simplify user’s finance management we have created smart budgeting, that shows day to day and month to month safe to spend sum on each spendings category.
Another feature is person to person payments that offers to choose recipient from Facebook, Twitter or your contact list, even not knowing his payment details. Of Course if you know them, you can choose account to account transactions.
And last feature I want to mention is financial marketplace that actually transforms boring product list into highly engaging banking App Store. With attractive images, personal recommendations, testimonials and support from banking community. It provides financial experience in the modern way that we are already used to.
If you want to find more, check full case-study of “How Online Banking UX Design Should Work” .
And in the end there is testing.
You have to prove your design theory in a field by showing prototypes to actual users. In our case we raised customer satisfaction by 320% and engagement by 85%. You can imagine what is all about in terms of revenue.
Main Takeaways
So, banking innovation recipe from UX Design Agency is “quite simple” —
1. jump in “customer shoes”,
2. learn “customer language”,
3. deliver “magic button” experience as a result.
Read other posts from UXDA:
Banking Should Meet Young Customers’ Expectations to Survive in the Age of Disruption
The Open Banking Revolution of 2018 Will Take UX Design to the Forefront
How Banking Can Miss Out on Success in 2018: 5 UX Questions About Blockchain, Сhatbots and AI
TOP10 Misconceptions about Financial UX Design that Threaten the Future of Banks and Fintechs
UI/UX Concept of Mobile-Only Challenger Bank
UX design case study of how online banking user interface should work
Visit UX Design Agency to learn more about our work and portfolio. UXDA is a leading financial user experience and user interface design agency for banking and FinTech only, that executes design thinking in finance industry.
