Case study: Bank app redesign
Tags: Product Design, Fintech, User Experience Design, User Research, Banking

INTRODUCTION

Heritage Bank Plc. (HB PLC), often referred to as Heritage Bank or simply HB, is a financial services institution. It is one of the commercial banks licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria] with a national operating license, that offers retail banking, corporate banking, online/internet banking, investment banking and asset management services

BACKGROUND

I needed to help a friend transfer money from her Heritage Bank App, with my experience using other Bank Apps, I expected a smooth ride, but it wasn’t so exactly, navigating through the process was not very user friendly, some weeks later, I decided to check what other users had to say on play store and saw several users having the same issue I had and more so I decided to take up the challenge of redesigning the mobile app.

Project Objective

I needed to discover users pain points and usability issues through quantitative and qualitative research, suggest possible design solutions and testing my design solution with real users.

My Design process

USER RESEARCH

Who are the Users?

I sought to know how the users (both current and potential) think, what they say, what they feel and what they do because this will be vital in my design process.

Because of the scope of this project, my users would be those who currently use Heritage Bank mobile App and potential users

The first place to know what current users say, think and do would be their comments on the play store

Users review on play store

But, sometimes what users say is different from what they do, hence I needed to carry out some contextual user research to see how current users navigate through the App, hence I decided to add some form of qualitative research.

I will need the right participant that will fit into my research requirement

Here were the criteria for selecting participants

Smartphone users Heritage Bank mobile App users Location ( I used Lagos, Nigeria ) Users with experience in fintech products.

Here were some of the questions during the interviews

How often do you use the mobile App?

What is your most frequent action on the app?

Do you use other banks mobile apps?

What do you which heritage bank have that you already see in other banks?

If you can, what would you change about the app?

INSIGHTS FROM USER RESEARCH/INTERVIEWS.

After my user research, I had with me two sets of actionable data

Quantitative data Qualitative data

Quantitatively, I found out from my user research that

80% of the users use more than one mobile banking application, so they generally have task expectation

90% most frequent action on their banking app is money transfer, purchase of airtime, data purchase and general bill payment

70% had problems using the fingerprint feature during the login process

70% had a tough time locating their card.

Qualitatively, with my interaction with users during the interview, they complained about:

Long onboarding process

The confusing fingerprint login feature

Inability to view older transactions at ease

Poor visual appeal

The long process of making money transfer

Not user-friendly UX

Competitive Research

Although in the Nigeria banking space, Heritage Bank does not as of now have the level of popularity and customer base compare to Banks like First Bank of Nigeria, Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank, Zenith Bank or UBA, however, these are clear and healthy competitors, so I decided to compare the feature of the current Heritage Bank App with its competitors.

competitive analysis report

PERSONA

IDEATE

Brainstorming

With the users need in mind, the How can I questions helped influence the process of brainstorming on different possible ways to solve the problem before me, but as a basis, I was able to highlight some features and ranked their importance in the design process.

User flow diagram

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Information Architecture

Sketched Solution

Sketches

After the brainstorming session, I sketched some ideas for a solution, this was still subject to change upon the progress of the project

Paper prototype testing

Designing for users is great, designing with users is better, in light of this, I engaged my users in the low fidelity paper prototype to see their interaction flow with my design model to complete a given task, this is to ensure that all my decisions are user-centric.

How did I do this?

I highlighted some flows and interactions that I was proposing as a solution to some of the pain points of the User

I did a paper prototype of

Onboarding process

Money Transfer

Airtime Recharge

Firstly, I told each participant ahead of time the purpose of the test so that they are well aware of what they are doing

In summary, I did the following

I told them that there are no right or wrong answer

I asked, what do you expect next after showing each paper screen

I avoided asking questions like ‘where would you click next’ because clicking might not be the next action in the mind of the user,

I used an engaging environment which can be distracting because I am building a mobile device that will be used in such an environment

I used phrases like you have just help me see what I was looking for when they asked questions like ‘am I right?

I told them they can stop at any time they want to

I was presenting each screen paper prototype to the users to see their interaction with the entry flow into the design.

Seeing that the conceptual model of my design matches with the customers mental model, I was confident they would be able to complete the task when the entire flow is ready.

HIGH FIDELITY DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Account/Home Page

The present Account/Home page had a lot of issues, firstly, some users had it tough locating their other accounts and the transaction history was not aesthetically pleasing, I decided to make the users accounts more visible and made the transaction history more user friendly, I also added frequent beneficiaries for quick and easy money transfer.

I also added easy card control for users should they misplace their cards or something close to that happens.