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Financial Services

Jan 24 2023

The Importance Of UX Implementation In Financial Institutions

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Overview

As a UX Designer, one will experience a multitude of industries across their career. Two of the most historically challenging areas, across the board, to assert major design change have been Healthcare and Financial.

When approaching an expansive operational change pitch, its important to succinctly addresses the major pain points from a creative/UX view when working with corporate stakeholders that have a seemingly opposite set of skills and expertise (ex. math vs. art).

The challenge becomes: how do we shift traditional “path of least resistance” thinking to a mindset visualizing the importance of forward progress?

The following ten strategy points are key to informing a current and/or future financial services client of the progressive mindset behind updating their UX infrastructures:

1. View Design As A Methodology, Not a Package

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Banks and financial institutions perceive design as a package while fintechs see design as a consumer-centered approach, but let’s call it what it is; a lack of understanding.

Design has been viewed by many clients as “paint” and not “structure,” and that is specifically why it’s so important to educate stakeholders on Design Thinking and Methodologies. It is so much more than making a logo, picking colors, and playing with fonts.

Design-based decision-making should not be led by Product Owners, Project Managers, Developers, Engineers, or even Stakeholders. They can provide unique perspectives, present opinions on research, provide reasonable requirements, all while engaging with in-depth data and applicable feedback. But the rest should be in the hands of the Designer. 

2. Increase The Scope Of UX Design Influence

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UX experts are trained to be user-centric while curating and crafting experiences that ensure user satisfaction and delight. Thinking that “anyone can do this” is pure hubris. Yes, everyone can be creative. No, not everyone is good at it.

Hire the right talent and give them the freedom to explore.

Financial apps must be about ease-of-use and intuitiveness before tackling how pretty it looks or stuffing as many features in as possible. UX, as a design method, ensures that the user is fairly represented against the requirements of the need. Stakeholders typically have strong opinions on design, but they aren’t likely to be the ones using it everyday. It’s acceptable to push back, but you should have the research to support it.

3. Challenge The Banking Legacy

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We should remember that it takes two – Product Owners and UX Leads should be solidified as the cornerstone of every good project from the very beginning. You need both of them to always be present: the client advocate and the user advocate.

Traditional corporations rely on structured hierarchy to get things done. However, inserting the pragmatism of Design allows for individual agency and decision-making to happen on a more detailed level and that is where the trust is needed. Your UX folks are smart. Let them do their thing.

The core takeaway is that UX people are needed before the project kicks off and should remain attached during the entire duration to capture data, extrapolate findings, align with visuals, and prepare to iterate on the next version. They help tie it all together. Let the User Experience team understand how users experience your product.

4. Switch From Fragmentation To Ecosystem

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“Fintech”, as a label, is shifting to include any new products and/or brands that are promoting digital as the main primer for change within their organization and offerings. Banks are resistant to this type of change simply due to how their control of wealth is dependent on small static changes over long periods of time: Take money, sit on it, make interest, share dividends.

Fintech is breaking down walls that banks cannot adapt to, like cryptocurrency, DeFi, and other new concepts. Not all banks have invested in fintech, but all fintech have some form of banking service. 

Many traditional banks failed due to the inability to accept rapid evolutions as they typically desire stability and slow, predictable movement. That’s what happened in the mid-2000s when small banks couldn’t invest in online banking in a reasonable timeframe and/or provided a poor user experience. They “stayed the course” right into getting absorbed by larger entities to survive.

We know that embracing flexibility and new ideas can be risky, but a good risk assessment will show massive gains for a healthy investment in UX Research and Design.

5. Put UX Research First

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Fintech excels in Product Design which culminates research and data into a cohesive and consistently built system from the very beginning of the brand’s inception.

Naturally, creating multiple services on one product can be hard. The FDIC says you need this, InfoSec says you need that, Engineering wants to save time and use a 3rd-party API/iFrame, and so on. We are challenged to be in compliance and have a beautiful application for users to intuitively engage with. But that’s the reason why it’s so important to invest in your UX teams!

Make sure that you have the data to support a unified system of products and services while maintaining a Design Language to keep everything looking and operating the same on every page for every user. Consistency matters!

6. Provide A Unique Value Proposition

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Even if you’re “copycatting” products from other systems, your users are different and finding out what their needs are will increase engagement much more than assumptive design ever could. If you don’t know what people think of your product, you’ll never be able to pivot in the right direction. When they move, you move, just like that. There’s a big difference between qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Everyone wants to try to cram their entire product offering into a single app. It’s wonderful to have, but sometimes it’s just plain impossible to accomplish with the time and resources you’ve been given. We can’t always “make it fit” for everyone. The honest truth is that it won’t ever work for everyone and the individuality of your target demographics and focused segmentation should be the most valuable asset in your research arsenal.

Yes, you need a unique value prop, but only if it directly benefits your audience in a positive and engaging way. You want people to tell others about your product in a satisfied way. Bad reviews always lead to abandonment.

Take some time to compare what fintech and your direct competition is doing well and filter out how you can emulate those good ideas while staying on-brand and on-message. A good designer can help translate this information into a fully realized and custom experience.

7. Drop The Obsession With Banking Functionality

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We should try to fit in as much functionality as possible, but not at the expense of the product or its users.

Every customer should have a journey that offers a simple “happy path” to completion. In finance, complexity can often be a source of pride and exclusivity. That may not be the case with all of your customers.

8. Measure Results By Quality, Not Quantity

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Quality vs. Quantity is not a thing anymore. It’s instead the marrying of the two ideals of Quality and Quantity in a cohesive and engaging way.

The qualitative research that needs to be done should be exponentially impacted by the quantitative surveys and analytics gathered during initial research. For examples, we may lose quality when speed is priority, however this is why rapid user testing and prototyping is so important.

Test, review, rinse, repeat.

9. Focus On Emotions Instead Of Information

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Empathy will always be key. People have emotional connections to their finances and the institutions they invest that buying power into. Banks tend to overwhelm people with unfamiliar paperwork, nomenclature, acronyms, and fine print.

The future of finance is making informed decisions based on simplified communication and customer loyalty. Keeping the complex curtains up will keep curious people away.

10. Invest More In Customer Experience Than In Marketing

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The customers you have are worth more than the ones you lack. Marketing tends to focus on garnering new business while maintaining existing relationships are not as much of a priority. And that’s OK! But maintaining long financial relationships with contented customers far outweighs the risk of that unknown potential.

Let your product speak for itself through accessibility, effective UI, and an intuitive landscape. You want people to recommend your product to others. Curiosity and satisfaction go hand-in-hand; if you’re interested in something, would you rather find out about it from a banner ad, or several different family members and friends who all gave it glowing reviews?

Closing Thoughts

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UX, UI, Design, and Creative are not as highly valued or involved at an early enough stage of the project to make an impact. Financial companies tend to relegate those team members to Production Art and QA Maintenance asks due to a lack of understanding of how effective and powerful adding UX Designers can be. Keeping them out of the project loop will not only dull their edges, but have them looking for new roles elsewhere.

Fintech teaches us that looking at finance in a customer-centric way is effective, profitable, and mirrorable at the corporate scale for banking.

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Design UX/UI, Financial Services, Learning and Development, Product Development · Tagged: best practices, design, Design Programs, INRHYTHMU, learning and growth, ux, uxui

Apr 25 2017

Engineering Driven Culture – InRhythm’s Code Lounge

 

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Last week, driven by the feedback from our engineering leadership team, we held InRhythm U’s first-ever Code Lounge, inviting everyone from across the company and a few external guests to learn new skills, brush up on existing ones, or just get help on a personal project.

Code Lounge featured technical “stations” for Angular, React, React Native, Express, Vue, Node.js, Java, QA, UX and Product, each led by an InRhythm senior developer instructor. Accompanied by food and drinks on the company, the event provided an easy atmosphere and low-key way for everyone to network and learn a thing or two!

Here are a few key takeaways and learnings from Code Lounge:

  1. To understand what is important to our engineers, we need to be constantly listening to and engaging with our teams. While Vue and Java were not on our list of station offerings originally, in putting the event together we quickly found out that they are in high demand. Luckily, we were able to add both of these to our agenda, thanks to our very talented engineers who were able to lead these discussions.
  2. Collaboration happens when culture is driven from bottom up, not top down. Our engineers and UX/product leads single-handedly drove Code Lounge, with management simply enabling from the background with budget and logistics support. The magic of the night was the true collaboration seen across the stations, individuals coming prepared with best practices in their domains to share without being asked, and amazing learning and teaching happening in tandem across the room.
  3. Angular seemed to be the least popular station at the event, perhaps because a large part of our team is already fluent in Angular or perhaps due to newer technologies featured, such as Vue and React – these were the most popular and buzzed-about tables.
  4. We love learning and development at InRhythm, but admittedly beer on tap, Lombardi’s pizza, pool and music make it even better.

At InRhythm, our goal is to give our people the best opportunities for learning and growth. This goal is something I feel very passionate about as do all our senior leaders across the organization. Code Lounge is just one example of how we keep our company culture and ourselves at the top of our game!  If you want to find out more, visit us at www.inrhythm.com.

 

Written by Shivani York · Categorized: Bootcamp, Code Lounge, Events, Financial Services, InRhythm News, Learning and Development, Software Engineering, Talent · Tagged: Angular, Code lounge, engineers, Java, JavaScript, Learn, Node, Node.js, React, React native, software engineering

Jan 03 2017

InRhythm 2016 Year in Review

Happy New Year from InRhythm!


This year, have had the privilege of working with truly amazing clients, serving as their trusted partner in implementing modern digital transformations. We have made inroads into new markets, expanded our geographic influence, and were fortunate enough to collaborate on many incredibly exciting projects. Our continued growth and success have laid the foundation to make this new year even better.

As we look to 2017, we would like to share InRhythm’s most memorable, interesting and fun facts from 2016. Wishing you success in the new year!

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Written by Shivani York · Categorized: Agile & Lean, Design UX/UI, Events, Financial Services, InRhythm News, Product Development, Software Engineering, Talent · Tagged: agile, Agile Assessment, Digital Transformation, growth, infographic, innovation, software engineering, ux

Dec 09 2014

How Financial Services Firms Master Innovation

Financial services firms have to be innovative to attract, retain and keep customers happy. Customers have high expectations – they want the same user experience on the ATM, on their laptop, tablet and mobile device. They don’t care that it’s challenging to create a multi-channel experience across legacy platforms, and they don’t want to wait more than a second or two for their page to load. What’s even more challenging, is that the competition has already figured it out, and soon customers will too. So how are top financial services firms responding?

Legacy Platform Revitalization

One of the biggest (and most common) challenges to overcome is injecting innovation into obsolete systems that were designed to process large batch transactions overnight. The top firms have made the investment in time, budget and resources to upgrade their core platform technology.

Single Page Application & Responsive Web

Mobile banking is on the rise, and applications need to be responsive to account for the nearly 42% of mobile banking users in the US. The benefits of Single Page Applications are abundant: faster load times, fluid user experiences and maintainable code to name a few. Single Page Applications are fast becoming a best practice in the financial world.

Lean UX Design

Design based on research and customer validation to provide cohesive brand experiences across multi-channels is vital for financial institutions to stay ahead of a highly competitive market. The leaders in the market have placed a heavy emphasis on design and robust user experiences.

High Velocity Agile Delivery

Most firms claim to be “Agile shops”, but saying and doing are two different things. Those that have mastered Agile effectively are out-performing competitors and rapidly delivering quality products.

As we close out the year, now is the time for financial institutions to raise their game, and accelerate their efforts to be more disruptive and inject innovation to stay ahead. Making the investment in time, resources and priority in the above 4 things will propel firms to continually out-perform competitors, gain new customers and raise brand loyalty.

Written by Marilyn Daly

Written by inrhythmAdmin · Categorized: Agile & Lean, Design UX/UI, Financial Services

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