UX/UI Design

To start this challenge, we had to know what we were talking about, in which world we were going to face, so we started by creating some research objectives. The first thing we had to understand was what fintech was and what was its current positioning within banking, as well as understanding such as it interacted with traditional banking as well as its similarities and differences. In which we found that there is a great diversity of Fintechs, which specialize in different sectors of banking and the economy, as well as PFMs can not completely cover the needs of users, so traditional banking is still necessary.
The use of PFMs in everyday life improves convenience and streamlines certain routine processes and in recent years we can see a great growth of cryptocurrencies and investment in them.

Once we understood the Fintech ecosystem and specifically the PFMs, we started to investigate the “ Millennial and Centennial generations. From this process we obtained a series of guidelines and biases that would give us the keys to adapt the interviews and surveys to our target users.

Common traits between both generations:

• Accustomed to globalization.
• Digital construction of identity.
• They live with disbelief of everything institutional.
• They assume the “economy of uncertainty”.

Demands to banking services:

• Accustomed to globalization.
• They value the digitalization of banking services.
• They take into account the offer of additional products that streamline and facilitate their daily lives.
• They demand offers, grants and financial aid due to the general precariousness of their economy.
• They demand immediacy in banking processes.

What’s on the market

We conducted a benchmarking, analyzing the different existing PFMs, both those of traditional banking, such as BBVA, Santander or Ing; as well as PFMs that are not linked to any bank such as Fintonic, Goin and Arbor, among others.

From this analysis we have been able to conclude that:

• Apps from large banks have more resources and therefore, their digital platforms are more complete and versatile.
• External PFMs have more specific services to cover certain needs such as savings.
• The security of personal data in this area is a top priority.
• Visual support to reinforce the verbal message is important, especially in technical areas.
• Platforms with an initial walkthrough help users to familiarize themselves with the platform, avoiding possible usage errors in the future and ensuring a better user experience.

With these conclusions, it was time to get to know the user and contrast the information obtained in the desk research with what our users, millennials and centennials, think.

First we conducted a survey of 90 people, where we were able to classify our users by age and see, according to their generation, what relationship they have with digital banking and PFMs, starting by knowing if they are familiar with the terminology. We were also able to see, broadly speaking, which banking entities are the most used by these generations in Spain and what is the main use they give to the platforms, among other things.

At the same time, we conducted a 21-question interview with 10 users in order to find out what they think of traditional banking, online banking and PFMs.

From this we were able to conclude several things:

• The activities most performed in PFMs are related to savings, transfers and personal finance.
• 50% of respondents only use their bank’s app.
• 63% of respondents have more than one account in different banks.
• 87% of the respondents have their accounts in big banks.
• 92% of respondents use their banking app a couple of times a week or more.
• New generations prefer to do their banking digitally.
• They demand tools that control their spending and help them save.
• They consider the understanding of the financial terms used to be complex.
• They demand agile and immediate communication systems with the platforms.
• They have a very negative perception of traditional banking.

  With all this, we created our affinity map, with which we were able to obtain an overall view of the research, from which, by voting on the points that each team member considered most important, we arrived at our Insights:

  • There is a loss of confidence in traditional banking.
  • There is a demand to update and adapt financial products to target users.
  • There is a communication difficulty caused by the language used by banks.
  • Unification of services in a single application.
  • Streamlining of operations.
  • Personalization of services and products.

Once we got the main insights, we started the ideation and conceptualization process.

After having our user personas defined, we distributed them in a user map, classifying them according to their level of purchasing power, and their ability to save.

With our archetypes defined, we began to assess the appropriateness of the approach of these profiles, developing a problem statement, inspired by these profiles, asking ourselves “who needs it and why?

In order to continue with the ideation and conceptualization process, besides knowing our User Persona, we had to empathize with them, with their way of thinking, their needs and their frustrations. That is why we decided to make three empathy map canvas, in which we could reflect the perception of reality that our User Persona would have.

At this point of the process we have already managed to convert much of our research in the real needs of users, we make a Value Proposition Canvas, in order to contrast the needs of our users with our product.
For this process we will use Akira Arai such as heavy user.

A day of Akira…

This process consists in elaborating in a fictitious way the development of the activity of one of our users in order to be able to analyze in an empathic way his emotional evolution during the use of our product. To do so, we decided to divide this process into three phases: before use, during use and after use. As a result, we obtained the pain points (those points of conflict with our product). In this way we can resolve these conflicts before prototyping and take them into account during prototyping.

To elaborate this process we selected Akira Arai as our heavy user. The fiction that arises is such as a young student with no income of her own sees her economy in an unstable way and starts using our product to improve her administration and even get some savings.

To start with this phase of the project, we based ourselves on the main value propositions. The main objectives were to centralize information and activities, streamline the use of our product and personalize the experience of our users.

The first thing we considered was the logical order and the main structure of the information in our product. To do this we started by performing a Card Sorting, which would be hybrid. That is, the participants in this process would receive a series of cards with the main tools and services of our product, and in turn we would provide them with the main groups in which they should distribute the cards. We carried out this process with eight participants, whom we accompanied and assisted throughout the process in an ethical manner. In this way we deduced the collective logic for the distribution and future navigation of the information, therefore creating our sitemap, by means of the octopus tool.

After obtaining a logical order provided by the users we started to elaborate prototype proposals. In this way all the previous work started to become tangible. For this we created a system by means of which the accessibility of the main services and products was located a few taps away from the Home page.
This would be the distribution from which we started, which we reflected in the following Frames to start working on them.

Once we had a developed structure, we proceeded to develop the navigation flows that would govern our product. In this way we verified this coherence and checked the agility we were looking for such as value proposition. For this purpose, we created three flows.

The first flow consisted of making a purchase by accessing the Wallet loyalty cards as well as making use of our product’s cash back system.

 

The second flow consisted of linking a second bank account to our profile.

And the third showed the dashboard customization process.

 

At this point we started to create our brand identity. For this we started with the challenge of coming up with a name, such as the result of a brain storming session we got Beenk. This is the result of the sum of the words bee (bee in English) and bank (bank).

Why a bee? Very simple, bees have been a symbol related to banking and money since the 19th century. In addition, bees are characterized by their collective character, which is related to some of our objectives such as creating a sense of belonging to a group. Such as their ability to collect, which is related to our savings system.

Based on these visual characteristics we started to develop our high fidelity Frames, all of them according to our brand identity.

This was our second approach to the world of UX/UI Design, this case study was done together with Jorge Esteban, Jorge Garcia, Julia Poza y Liz Scaccia during our Upgrade-Hub Bootcamp.

Thank you!