People-centred banking services
How the latest human-centred approaches
could be relevant for the banking sector
Design Flanders | December 2007
© 2007 Experientia
Areas
Design Flanders | December 2007
© 2007 Experientia
Areas
Four major areas
that could benefit most
from human-centred design
 Professional application development
 Transactional websites
 Branch design
 Mobile banking services
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Areas
Professional application development
 Financial software applications used by bank staff
and running on server or on bank intranet
 Often developed with technical, security and
business specifications only
 Development is rarely done in-house
 Banking staff is usually not strongly involved in
development
 Limited contextual understanding of staff needs
and requirements
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Areas
Professional application development
 Applications are difficult and cumbersome to use
 They are not intuitive
 More time involved in interacting with applications,
less time in interacting with customers
 More errors
 Less engagement
 Less awareness of full functionalities
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Areas
Transactional websites
 Most banking transactions can
currently be performed on the web,
some transactions can only be done
online
 End-users are not experts in this
 Customers will fall back on banking
staff whenever there are problems,
which is costly and time-consuming
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Areas
Branch design
 The role of branches has changed with
most operations being online
 No longer primary place for the handling
of small procedures
 Instead environment for more strategic
processes that require person-to-person
interaction
 Branch design has often not evolved to
accommodate this cultural/social change
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Areas
Branch design
 Anonymous, cold environment
 Privacy concerns
 Opening hours not convenient
QuickT ime™ and a
decompressor
are needed t o see this pict ure.
 Spaces are not thought from
needs of current types of users
(single people, parents, elderly),
nor the current types of uses
(longer, more strategic
conversations)
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Areas
Mobile banking
 Currently in experimental phase
 Some SMS based services (security alerts)
 But mainly WAP/Internet based (e.g.
Movo in France for small transfers)
 Exploration of mobile based payments
through near field technology and sema
codes
 In general, still very desktop based
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Areas
Mobile banking in Africa
 Weak institutional banking
system
 More bottom-up innovation
 M-Pesa in Kenya (with
Vodafone) and Wizzit in South
Africa
 Extensive user research done
by Nokia and Samsung
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Areas
Mobile banking in Africa
 Companies most interested in
this are NOT banks BUT
handset manufacturers and
telecom operators
 Risk: banks loosing out on
mobile banking market, just
like record industry has lost out
on music downloads markets
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Human-centred
design
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Human-centred design process
People
Understand
In-depth understanding of user needs
through observation and analysis
User profiles
Context
Ideas
Foresight
Design
Research and scenarios
on future developments
Scenarios
User-centred
design concepts and strategies
Design specification
Experience
Touchpoints
Test
Prototypes
Comprehensive usability analysis
Implementation support
Design Flanders | December 2007
Strong user experiences
Iterative prototypes
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Foresight
Identify future
business opportunities
Medium range scenarios about the way
people will organise their lives in the
future, what products and services they
might need, and how they will use them,
to help identify opportunities for design
and innovation.
Approach
 Context research
 Trend extrapolation
 Expert opinions (Delphi)
 Opportunity mapping
 Scenario development
Deliverables
 Trend analyses
 Technology roadmaps
 Mood boards
 Scenarios of use
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Understanding
Connect marketing research
with in-depth user understanding
To understand people’s experiences and
behaviours and to grasp how they interact
with products and services,
we need to observe them in their own
environments, analyse their conversations,
flows and tasks,
and use these qualitative insights
to model product and services.
Approach
 User experience modelling
 Contextual inquiry
 Design ethnography
 Interviews with extreme
and lead users
 Conversation analysis
 Task and flow analysis
Deliverables
 User profiles and personas
 Customer journey maps
 Experience models
 Scenarios
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Design
Create user-centred strategies
and design concepts
Translate user and use needs and desired
experience, into creative and human-centred
strategies, concepts and designs, assuring
compelling, desirable and useful solutions
for the end-users,
and added value for client companies.
Approach
 Strategic design
 Innovation workshops
 Opportunity modelling
 Idea generation
 Concept development
 Communication design,
interaction design, industrial
design, information
architecture
Deliverables
 Concept visualisations
 Sketches
 Design drawings and models
 User and use requirements
 Design specifications
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Prototype
Assure effective and strong
experiences through prototyping
By designing progressively more
refined prototypes,
we gain insights on what works with
people and what doesn't, and why,
and we can test user acceptance,
usage benefits and drawbacks in
various contexts,
making sure that the end result is
solid and valuable.
Approach
 Just enough prototyping
 Iterative process
 Conceptual prototypes
 Appearance prototypes
 Functional prototypes
Deliverables
 Lo-fi prototypes are
developed with simple
tools: paper, screen, video,
wizard-of-oz, walkthrough…
 Hi-fi prototypes are more
sophisticated: here we have
applications, appearance
models and functional
models
Design Flanders | December 2007
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Test
Deliver robust products and services
through comprehensive user testing
Experientia’s rich methodology to assess,
measure and evaluate the user experience
delivers qualitative results
that help companies and organisations
to tightly align their products and services
with their users’ needs.
Approach
 Participatory methods
 Heuristic evaluations
 Cognitive walkthroughs
 Focus groups
 Usability testing
Deliverables
 Usability analysis
 Prototype iterations
 Implementation support
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Implementing
the approach
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First of all
Observation
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Implementing the approach
Software applications and
transactional websites
 Trust and credibility are the key
ingredients of any online banking
service
 Trust requires care and control:
a system that shows care and a
user in full control who can do
what he/she needs to do.
 Credibility is delivered by a
consistent, reliable and highquality user experience.
Design Flanders | December 2007
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Implementing the approach
Software applications and
transactional websites
 Search
 Personalisation
 Navigation/IA
 Contextual support
 Thesaurus and glossary
 Example: a corporate intranet
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Implementing the approach
Branch design
 Participation and
engagement
 Developed around
people’s needs
 Example: the pharmacy
of the future
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Implementing the approach
Mobile service development
 The interface is everything (and
it is small)
 Understanding context of use
 Anticipating future technologies
 Example: work for Swisscom and
Deutsche Telekom
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Thank you
Design Flanders | December 2007
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Experientia s.r.l.
Via Cesare Battisti 15
10123 Torino
Italy
T +39 011 812 9687
Partners
 Mark Vanderbeeken
 Michele Visciola
 Jan-Christoph Zoels
 Pierpaolo Perotto
info@experientia.com
www.experientia.com
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