What we should build an application: the reasoning of the interface
Look at the mobile phone screen - you use some applications with pleasure, some as needed, and some simply remove and look for an acceptable analogue for the inconvenience. When you make a mobile application, the most problematic part is the creation of a working prototype. You need to understand how the interface elements will interact, how the end user will work with the interface. You say - that's what testing is for. But before testing, you need to create a working version that must meet the requirements of customers, and in the case of an application for banks, millions of users. How to approach this?
Look for an approach to any segment!
Participants in the Promotion contest are invited to create a mobile application that will cover the interests of the selected user segment. We also work on client applications and websites and will certainly share our experience in this post, but in the beginning we would like to tell you about a recent interesting experience - developing the interface of the ESF program.
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Clients were our employees, who at that time were already accustomed to working in their applications and program interfaces. And they were fundamentally different from users of mobile applications - in that employees interact with the interface not literally from time to time, but literally continuously. They had to work in what we had to do. Everything was important: how the screen scrolls, how the windows open, how many operations each user performs, the absence of stimuli in the interface, etc.
We have a huge number of products (any "exotic"), and still a rich legacy of technologies that are ahead of the interfaces, and we got a lot of separate programs with different logic and different interface solutions. In addition, we must ensure high reliability of operations, so that grandmother can receive a pension on time, and the mortgage is paid without delay. We started with the fact that we have established the logic of customer service, and then we began to embed operations into the logic of service. In order to do this, we decompose operations on atomic parts, in small steps we change them for the better, and we must take into account the power of users' habits to existing systems. For example, we decided to learn how to draw users' attention to hints through the interface and used orange for this. But they found out that in current systems there is various unnecessary information for the user, which is highlighted in orange. Therefore, they are accustomed to not paying attention to the orange color. I had to look for a special solution for hints.
When we started to work, we had only a few designers, it came out very nice, but long and piece. With the growth of the program, this approach has ceased to suit us, it was necessary to continue to make a good product, but to learn how to produce it in large quantities. Therefore, we realized a simple idea: designers are different. Someone is interested to come up with large spacecraft concepts, someone is more interesting to work in a team in order to get a daily response.
Therefore, we divided the design block into 2 parts:
Conceptual designer - comes up with cool concepts, creates generic templates and solutions. He also supervises several projects at once, supports a single view of the system interfaces.
The application designer works directly in a team and creates a product, daily communicating with products, analysts, programmers bit by bit and quickly implements conceptual solutions.
The work has not yet been completed, but we are moving towards creating an intuitive system for very complex banking processes.
Now you should think that a mobile application for user groups that access it once or twice a day is not so scary to design and prototype.
In the comments to our previous posts on the Promotion contest, we have been repeatedly reproached for not giving audience segments, rubbing them and other analytics. We do this fundamentally, because we ourselves know for sure - the best ideas and the most terrible and strange flaws are revealed when you talk about the experience of using the application with front office, employees of bank branches. Users come to them with their own problems and questions. So the only source of creativity next to you - see what lives and what your chosen segment needs. Maybe pensioners need a large font? Perhaps businessmen lack some kind of token? Do youngsters need strict spending limits on shopping days? Chips and ideas and the next - you just find them, see and hear.
We ourselves go with surveys in bank branches. In addition, we have an obligatory process - design thinking, when a team is assembled, disconnected from work concerns and creative at full capacity. Ideas are collected, tested on end users and already in a ready-made form, the very best goes to the project.
Here are two bright cases on design thinking that we have implemented relatively recently. They are very revealing.
The most important thing is to realize the pain of the user, understand what he feels and go beyond his professional perception of the application. Such analytics is the coolest tool for studying the audience.
You do not need to be an expert to see how fast new mobile devices come to the market with new operating systems and continuously updated software. Mobile application runs the risk of becoming obsolete in a matter of months.
It is easy to avoid. The basis of a good application is simple logic - if there are doubts in it, then these doubts are usually justified. The product will change, but the logic that permeates it (logic + sequence of user actions) should be a fairly long-term skeleton of the program. Of course, it's cool if the logic itself will adapt to changes in hardware or patterns of user behavior (self-study), but for now this is something from the realm of fantasy.
A mobile application for any user segment should be an application for people, not for professionals. As a developer and a UX designer, you can be endlessly admired with transitions, charts, and cost control mechanisms, and they won’t please the common man.
For example, there is a function of spending restrictions in the application: you spend no more than the required amount and you have a balance. It seems perfect - money piling up, you do not squander. But no - the application now and again reminds in the interface that you have a stash. It's really hard to resist, especially for girls :). And in the end it turns out that the application due to the UX fault did not fulfill its function.
Requirements of users must be taken into account: one thing for common people, another thing for professionals, another one for corporations. In fact, you must reach the audience, guess its thoughts, understand how it will interact daily with your banking application. This is exactly the case when millions of users cannot be mistaken, but you can create an insanely beautiful and feature-rich application that only a few will eventually use.
The possibility of monetization is one of the requirements of our competition and one of the most painful problems of banking services, which, like any product, must earn. When you plan to monetize, you need to take into account the important points, the main of which is to turn a person’s attitude towards what he has to pay for. How do we usually perceive the commission? As a mandatory payment to the bank for the service that we are forced to give from our personal account. The same story with auto payments - at first glance, it’s convenient when the mandatory payments for everything you don’t need to be remembered and taken care of leave on a card on a certain day (salary). And then you no longer notice the convenience of this service, but only see how you are charged money for gas / electricity / or other expenses from your account, that the payments are gone and the amount on the card has unpleasantly decreased.
Therefore, the developer should take care of monetization associated with something pleasant: paid for the light - you are light, did not leave the house in the rain to pay for the apartment - the commission is perceived as a payment for comfort and preserved health. And these little things decide a lot.
It is important to think about people, to be able to diversify commissions and payments, to calculate the burden based on the purpose of the application and its users, as well as the usefulness and importance of actions.
But most importantly, when you work on your application, remember the main message that underlies the relationship between users and the Bank: the Bank does not earn on applications - it helps. And this is his business mission.
Look for an approach to any segment!
We did an EFS interface. This is an important experience.
Participants in the Promotion contest are invited to create a mobile application that will cover the interests of the selected user segment. We also work on client applications and websites and will certainly share our experience in this post, but in the beginning we would like to tell you about a recent interesting experience - developing the interface of the ESF program.
')
Clients were our employees, who at that time were already accustomed to working in their applications and program interfaces. And they were fundamentally different from users of mobile applications - in that employees interact with the interface not literally from time to time, but literally continuously. They had to work in what we had to do. Everything was important: how the screen scrolls, how the windows open, how many operations each user performs, the absence of stimuli in the interface, etc.
We have a huge number of products (any "exotic"), and still a rich legacy of technologies that are ahead of the interfaces, and we got a lot of separate programs with different logic and different interface solutions. In addition, we must ensure high reliability of operations, so that grandmother can receive a pension on time, and the mortgage is paid without delay. We started with the fact that we have established the logic of customer service, and then we began to embed operations into the logic of service. In order to do this, we decompose operations on atomic parts, in small steps we change them for the better, and we must take into account the power of users' habits to existing systems. For example, we decided to learn how to draw users' attention to hints through the interface and used orange for this. But they found out that in current systems there is various unnecessary information for the user, which is highlighted in orange. Therefore, they are accustomed to not paying attention to the orange color. I had to look for a special solution for hints.
When we started to work, we had only a few designers, it came out very nice, but long and piece. With the growth of the program, this approach has ceased to suit us, it was necessary to continue to make a good product, but to learn how to produce it in large quantities. Therefore, we realized a simple idea: designers are different. Someone is interested to come up with large spacecraft concepts, someone is more interesting to work in a team in order to get a daily response.
Therefore, we divided the design block into 2 parts:
- Conceptual design
- Applied design
Conceptual designer - comes up with cool concepts, creates generic templates and solutions. He also supervises several projects at once, supports a single view of the system interfaces.
The application designer works directly in a team and creates a product, daily communicating with products, analysts, programmers bit by bit and quickly implements conceptual solutions.
The work has not yet been completed, but we are moving towards creating an intuitive system for very complex banking processes.
Now you should think that a mobile application for user groups that access it once or twice a day is not so scary to design and prototype.
Where to look for chips and insights
In the comments to our previous posts on the Promotion contest, we have been repeatedly reproached for not giving audience segments, rubbing them and other analytics. We do this fundamentally, because we ourselves know for sure - the best ideas and the most terrible and strange flaws are revealed when you talk about the experience of using the application with front office, employees of bank branches. Users come to them with their own problems and questions. So the only source of creativity next to you - see what lives and what your chosen segment needs. Maybe pensioners need a large font? Perhaps businessmen lack some kind of token? Do youngsters need strict spending limits on shopping days? Chips and ideas and the next - you just find them, see and hear.
We ourselves go with surveys in bank branches. In addition, we have an obligatory process - design thinking, when a team is assembled, disconnected from work concerns and creative at full capacity. Ideas are collected, tested on end users and already in a ready-made form, the very best goes to the project.
Here are two bright cases on design thinking that we have implemented relatively recently. They are very revealing.
Case 1
In the middle of 2016, the team passed a large-scale study of credit cards in the format of design thinking.
Over the two months that the project lasted, employees of various departments of the Bank, whose activities are related to credit cards, conducted over 100 interviews with various categories of clients: our bank card holders, those who for one reason or another refused them, people which face cards on work (sellers, cashiers, couriers of online stores, etc.). Clients were invited to interview both purposefully and simply searched literally among the crowd on the street: one of the teams conducted their interviews with passengers at the bus station; the other is at the railway station.
According to the results of the study, our colleagues from the card business received many so-called “insights”, and also received confirmation of a number of their theories about what customers are guided by when choosing a credit card, how they use them, for what reasons they refuse or close them what drives customers who choose products from other banks, so that customers want to see in the grocery, and on the contrary refuse. Design thinking has become the tool that allowed us to look at our products and processes from the inside not in many ways “zamylennye eyes”, but from the outside, literally feeling all the problems and “pains” with which almost every 9th every day a resident of our country (Sberbank's credit card portfolio is about 17 million cards). The findings and conclusions allowed to approve the concept of a new line of credit cards, which is now at the stage of implementation, as well as prioritize a number of improvements in the processes based on how important they are to customers.
One of the most important tools of design thinking was prototyping. This is when clients are offered not formal verbal descriptions to get feedback from clients about new functions or correct existing ones, but material prototypes that clients could see with their own eyes, hold in their hands, move, feel how they will work in the future. Based on the impressions received from testing prototypes, our colleagues from the Credit Card Development Department began to introduce those products and services that received the most vivid positive feedback.
One of the results that we managed to implement in the shortest possible time was an informational section on the bank ’s website on how to use credit cards and not pay interest.
The section contains a lot of information materials on the following issues:
- how much can you spend on the card;
- how to spend money on the card;
- how to withdraw cash;
- how not to pay interest;
- how to fill up the card;
- information about the bonuses "Thank you";
- solution of the most frequent problems.
This page was created so that absolutely every client could learn from scratch to use a credit card, understand how the grace period works, where to find out the date and amount of payment, and much more. It should be noted that the materials are presented in a language that is understandable for customers, without an abundance of banking terms that are far from clear to everyone. As an example, one of the most popular questions from customers sounds like "What if an ATM eats a card?" Instead of the formal, so familiar to us, "What if an ATM delays a bank card?". With the help of this resource, we plan to get closer to our clients, start communicating with them in their language, give answers to those questions that clients sometimes may be afraid of or embarrassed to ask, so as not to appear financially illiterate, due to lack of time or for other reasons. .
Case 2
Another bright solution that has already been implemented was the SMS “Debt”, which the credit card holder can send to number 900 and get up-to-date information about the amount of his debt on the card, the amount and term of the next payment, etc. During testing, the functionality received many positive feedback from customers, because this saves their time by eliminating the need to call the call center or search the Internet to enter Sberbank Online. Most of the service was appreciated by those customers who do not have smartphones, but ordinary push-button telephones, and there are quite a lot of such customers - these are people of the age categories who simply don’t need all modern functions, and those who are used to simply having a reliable device for everyday use. long-lived battery, etc.
The main value of this project in design thinking was that it was possible to take the staff responsible for their own small separate front of work, and give them the opportunity to see the “life path” of credit cards entirely: from the customer’s product selection stage to the closing or re-release stage , going through the processes of receiving cards, everyday use, etc. The brightest impression was when, after the end of the project, at a meeting on working with overdue card debts, one of the methodologists who participated in the project, replied to the proposal of the wording of the appeal to the clients with the words “What do you mean! Clients do not understand all these terms, they should not understand them, they need to communicate with clients in their language! ” And this is a methodologist - a person who is used to using only strict formal procedures, appeals, methods and rules in his everyday practice.
The most important thing is to realize the pain of the user, understand what he feels and go beyond his professional perception of the application. Such analytics is the coolest tool for studying the audience.
What should I do to make the application not obsolete tomorrow
You do not need to be an expert to see how fast new mobile devices come to the market with new operating systems and continuously updated software. Mobile application runs the risk of becoming obsolete in a matter of months.
It is easy to avoid. The basis of a good application is simple logic - if there are doubts in it, then these doubts are usually justified. The product will change, but the logic that permeates it (logic + sequence of user actions) should be a fairly long-term skeleton of the program. Of course, it's cool if the logic itself will adapt to changes in hardware or patterns of user behavior (self-study), but for now this is something from the realm of fantasy.
What users do not like
- No one likes to be considered a fool, deceived, imposed uncomfortable as convenient.
- They do not like an elaborate interface. It should be virtually invisible: the user simply works in the application, and does not think that this or that button performs.
- Do not like annoying ads - though not a discovery? Banners, offers in full screen and even greetings are very annoying when you are in a hurry to transfer money or pay for the service. By the way, this must be taken into account when developing a monetization scheme.
- They do not like pseudo-intellectual systems - prediction of store shares, partnership offers, auto-selection of additional services. This is certainly a useful set of possibilities, but you have to be careful with it - for example, give on demand.
How not to do the application
A mobile application for any user segment should be an application for people, not for professionals. As a developer and a UX designer, you can be endlessly admired with transitions, charts, and cost control mechanisms, and they won’t please the common man.
For example, there is a function of spending restrictions in the application: you spend no more than the required amount and you have a balance. It seems perfect - money piling up, you do not squander. But no - the application now and again reminds in the interface that you have a stash. It's really hard to resist, especially for girls :). And in the end it turns out that the application due to the UX fault did not fulfill its function.
Requirements of users must be taken into account: one thing for common people, another thing for professionals, another one for corporations. In fact, you must reach the audience, guess its thoughts, understand how it will interact daily with your banking application. This is exactly the case when millions of users cannot be mistaken, but you can create an insanely beautiful and feature-rich application that only a few will eventually use.
Application monetization
The possibility of monetization is one of the requirements of our competition and one of the most painful problems of banking services, which, like any product, must earn. When you plan to monetize, you need to take into account the important points, the main of which is to turn a person’s attitude towards what he has to pay for. How do we usually perceive the commission? As a mandatory payment to the bank for the service that we are forced to give from our personal account. The same story with auto payments - at first glance, it’s convenient when the mandatory payments for everything you don’t need to be remembered and taken care of leave on a card on a certain day (salary). And then you no longer notice the convenience of this service, but only see how you are charged money for gas / electricity / or other expenses from your account, that the payments are gone and the amount on the card has unpleasantly decreased.
Therefore, the developer should take care of monetization associated with something pleasant: paid for the light - you are light, did not leave the house in the rain to pay for the apartment - the commission is perceived as a payment for comfort and preserved health. And these little things decide a lot.
It is important to think about people, to be able to diversify commissions and payments, to calculate the burden based on the purpose of the application and its users, as well as the usefulness and importance of actions.
But most importantly, when you work on your application, remember the main message that underlies the relationship between users and the Bank: the Bank does not earn on applications - it helps. And this is his business mission.
- Join the Promotion contest , tell us about your vision of a mobile application for groups of bank customers, get a grant of 650,000 and a chance to become an application developer that will be used by millions.
- Get the opportunity to conclude a contract for the industrial development of the service and become the author of a mobile application for bank customers, which will be spoken about by millions.
- Terms and value of the contract are discussed on the basis of UX - testing.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/326976/
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