"What does accessible design look like when money, trust, and regulation are all on the line?" At Bank of the West, I led the redesign of the checking account summary of our mobile application to enable better user self-service during a time of uncertainty – the pandemic.
In 2022, like statements, disputes, and travel notices. Alongside this, I helped introduce a more research-driven design process across the org—working closely with product, content, and research partners. The work spanned responsive web and native app platforms.
+15% DAU Finding 'View Statements'
+38% DAU Finding 'Dispute Transactions'
+12% Finding 'Travel Notices'
Introduced Team-wide Process Changes
Me –– designing!
1 Product Manager
1 Researcher
1 Content Designer
From 2020 to 2021, fraud steadily rose by a dramatic 35% – significantly affecting Bank of the West's customer service wait time online
Customers can be less than a mile, or a 180 miles from any given branch–– the variance sucks and it makes it hard to troubleshoot problems.
My design organization wanted to use this project to trial out a more research-driven product discovery process. The entire product design organization wasn't solving problems effectively because of how silo-ed we were in our remote setting.
Research insights and use cases
Back then, our organization did not document user needs well and focused more on technical aspects of our engineering stack when writing tickets. In response to this, I mobilized my team to dig through past research documents
When customers open the account summary for checking acocunts, they look to do the following tasks below (in order of importance).
View balances and transactions
Money movement services (eg., transfers, deposits)
Fraud-related and records-related services (eg., Statements)
Ensuring scope clarity with the team
After collecting insights from research, I created "how might we" problem statements to clear with my team so that we're all on the same page. Doing this synchronized our collaboration and reduced miscommunication in our remote set-up.
How might we support our customer’s day-to-day needs (viewing their balance and recent transactions)
How might we improve the discoverability of account services like disputing transactions and viewing statements?
- How might we reduce fraud and reduce the number of calls in our support funnel?
The principles informing my decisions
Common Tasks First
Surface and properly focus essential and commonly used items
Stick to Standards
To reduce engineering lift, we stuck to our existing conventions
Foster Collaboration
Improve team efficiency by introducing new ways of work
Fostering better collaboration within the team
I planned my team's milestones through a project plan mimicking the flowchart below. I also coordinated working sessions 1x - 3x a week with my project partners. Before starting, I also made sure we spelt out the use cases for each person to ensure better team synergy.
Iterating across different stages of feedback
We did two stages of designs and research – one during discovery and one while developing a solution. I took feedback from stakeholders, and later on found an appropriate information hierarchy. We performed a variety of activities – card sorts, analyzed competing experiences, performed user interviews, ensured consistency across surfaces, worked on copy, and connected with engineering and compliance stakeholders.
Matching user expectations and jobs-to-be-done
I wanted to match the hierarchy of needs and expectations that our users have when entering this page when I was making this page. One technical limitation we faced – "Account Services" was placed on top of Recent Transactions, despite transactions being the more important priority.
Due to database limitations, we had to output the whole transaction list instead of shortening it to three lines (see ideal transaction list) with a further expandable view.
To determine if we're meeting our customer's day-to-day needs, we had our customers create their version of Account Details using broken-down components of my design. They created a similar hierarchy to what we designed, apart from transactions being below fraud-related and record-related services.
Addressing discoverability and promoting common and useful actions
Using analytics and insights from moderated interviews, we landed on several logical groupings. for our services Transfers and deposits at the top card and important fraud-related services in another component. Clicking into the '...' opens up an activity sheet with tabs. The items in this menu were grouped according to content type and how often they were used by our customers.
To evaluate if we're effectively solving for discoverability, we ran another tree test using the same methodology our November tree test used.
Org-wide process change –– two research cycles and problem alignment becomes a standard
After this project, product agreed to use the general research cadence and approach we had for future priorities. Each mid-size and large-size project will have at least 2 research cycles, and there will be an explicit session where the team agrees and discerns use cases to solve for. After a year of org-wide miscommunication and revised timelines, this was a serious win for our design organization.
In 2022, like statements, disputes, and travel notices. Alongside this, I helped introduce a more research-driven design process across the org—working closely with product, content, and research partners. The work spanned responsive web and native app platforms.
+15% DAU Finding 'View Statements'
+38% DAU Finding 'Dispute Transactions'
+12% Finding 'Travel Notices'
Introduced Team-wide Process Changes
Me –– designing!
1 Product Manager
1 Researcher
1 Content Designer
Bureaucratic process and legacy systems in the financial world posed challenges to being truly user-centric as a design team. However, building trust, truly was, the game-changer. Fostering relationships across departments enable teams to create change in living ecosystems.
Other key learnings during this time period
Financial UX is emotional UX. Behind every screen is someone nervous about trying to make rent, or saving money for their kid.
Clarity is care. Every time we made something easier to do internally or for our customers, people follow through.
Constraints sharpen creativity. Working within our bank's bureacratic limits pushed me to design more intentionally.
