Spark banking

The “design thinking” process, defined by the Stanford School of Design, includes five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Hasso Plattner Institute of Design

I've done five remote interviews with users of the most popular bank apps for iOS and Android as part of my primary qualitative study.
This made it easier to identify the most crucial and frequently utilised software features, as well as the problems and problems users face.

I discovered through interviews that users experience tension because they wish to protect their money. They require basic language, transparent and uncomplicated processes, and frequently rapid assistance.

I made the decision to offer a trustable, user-friendly daily banking service with attentive customer service. It's crucial to communicate with the user in his language and steer clear of complicated financial jargon.

Top 5 pain points from my research:
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1. Users need to make fast and safe transactions.
Usually, apps are overloaded, and steps are unclear, making users doubt if they will make it all right and won’t lose money.

2. Users are scared that scammers can access their bank accounts and
steal their money. Or that users make transactions wrong themselves.

3. Financial language is quite complex for most users.
Customers need clarification on the financial jargon and operations.

4. Users need help now and here.
They have a lot of questions, which need to be solved immediately,
but reaching the hotline or bank manager can be tricky.

5. Users can’t save money.
It isn’t easy to control all incomes/outcomes, analyze finances, and save money.

With the set of digital wireframes finished, I created a clickable prototype.
The primary user flow I identified was sending money to a contact to use the prototype for a usability study.

For my user testing session, I've used usertesting.com. My goal was to determine users' difficulties when completing core tasks: entering the app, making a transaction with another person, checking the balance, and viewing payment history.

My participant's settings were next: anyone who uses bank apps on their phones;
Operating system: iOS or Android; Age: from 18 till 65; Gender: any; Different abilities include: One user with a visual impairment, One user who isn’t fluent in English;

After the testing sessions I've made a lot of changes in the designs.

Then, I chose more appropriate ones and transformed them into mid-fidelity wireframes. I iterated on grayscale wireframes after each usability testing round until the flow became clear and understandable for users.

Low contrast can cause a lot of problems with reading. To avoid this, I checked text and icons on different backgrounds for both light and dark modes and found and fixed design issues with insufficient contrast.

Working on this project was an amazing experience. In the early phases, I experimented with a wide range of possibilities. I ended up "restarting" my project more than a few times with several iterations of my design file to ensure that every component of the app was purposefully created. Next time I would try doing more deep user research, as I feel that I could do more in that direction and avoid overiterating. Also I would create different testing scenarios, as not all the flows were tested during the usability tests. I'm satisfied with this project but there is a huge field of improvements exist and can be implemented the next iterations.