What it does?
MoneySmart is an algorithm-driven virtual relationship manager for banks and financial institutions like a true relationship manager.
a) Gathers data and behavioral questions about the customer.
b) It communicates and engages with customers by being contextual and realtime with our engagement platform that generates right suggestions
c) It provides with customers with right actionable advice and sells right products
c) It provides with customers with right actionable advice and sells right products
My Role
Money Smart has started with 5 people. In our team there were three are the co-founder, from NIT’s and IIT’s and myself. So they have an idea to have an to develop a “world smartest financial app”
and they wanted my UX help to design that. As explained as if like a wonderful dream but it was challenging.
Too much to achieve without knowing the users. I understood the requirement and tried to make blend their road map with the design process.
This is the case study completely based my experience working at startup, here I have omitted my views on it.
App names go with various versions like Simple wealth, Simpl and Money Smart. Therefore you see different names on the screens but its all same.
Exploring Fantasy world
We have to be very conscious of resources, time and contribution in order to develop the value that customers need from our app. Below are a few tips that have helped our team keep moving forward in the turbulent startup flow.
Switching Arms
Driving high-quality design work in a startup and getting through multiple iterations can be tough when you are crunched for time. In order to keep moving quality design-forward, I practice the art of task switching. Think of task switching as changing rowing arms. Just like with rowing, sometimes sticking with a particular design method or tool for a long period of time can decrease effectiveness. Research has shown that task switching provides cognitive clarity and increased energy when solving design problems.
I’m constantly switching between the design activities of sketching, whiteboarding, flowcharting, truth tables, spreadsheets, Illustrator, and Sketch. When do you make the switch? It’s kind of art — something that comes with time and situational awareness. The key is to recognize when switching between activities is needed. A few signs that have helped me know it is time to close Illustrator or Sketch and switch mediums are:
1. When I need to explore several different design directions or states rapidly, I turn to a whiteboard rather than build out each complex state in Sketch. This allows me to quickly see if there is a better design decision or if an idea breaks down before investing in details and symbols in a vector program.
2. When I find myself hung up on a workflow problem making mocks, I diagram the workflow to quickly explore paths and pages. This allows me to map out potential paths a user might take, providing a visual map and logic to follow in my mocks.
3. When I have so many different ideas in my head that I can’t seem to account for them quick enough by drawing or building them, I open a spreadsheet and or text editor and document my quick-flowing thoughts.
Defining a process gives a directional approach rather jumping back and forth. It's hard to go with each steps but but every step will be more clear and meanings will be more defined.
THE NEED
People don’t know how to manage their money…
SOLUTION
We will radically change the notion of banking from a customers perspective.
This is an idea we came up with after lots of explorations and understanding technology limitations. Our next step will be asking different users to understand their lifestyle in terms of finance that will give us more confidence to proceed forward.
Idea is to make tailor-made financial guidance based on your personal needs and spending habits, helping you understand how much can spend on what and when is the best time to utilise your money.
THE COMPETITION
1. Financial Product Market places
2. Personal Finance Management Tools
3. Direct Sales Agents for different financial products
Understanding of customer behavior by:
1. Analyzing financial transactions
2. Understanding social profile
3. Location aware
4. Identifying relevant products for customer needs
PRIMARY PERSONAS
Interviewed approx. 20 people, followed with a bit of ethnographic research, where we observed lifestyle, culture, tastes, and preferences. The sample size is quite small to efficiently validate our concepts.
Interviews were very fruitful, we got meaningful insights for financial thinking for instance, where they generally save and spend, how age factors influence, and more.
OUTCOME
Everyone wants to manage their money whether they wanted money or not. If they don't have money needs; Smart spending and saving by which they can achieve their goals. If they have money they have be smart in terms of investments.
By understanding both kinds of users ultimately they wants to live their life fully and secure money for their future.
USER JOURNEY
EXPLORATION (Phase -I)
Based on our user journey, I have defined information architecture. The key screen is the landing screen where the user will interact and figure out tasks or information, it's quite challenging because we have lots of information but need to segregate and define the hierarchy. User excites to know more and content should be dynamic, should not be same all the time.
Furthermore, I came up with iterations of dashboard or homepage low fidelity wireframes.
EXPLORATION (Phase -II)
Started the second phase of Iterations after discussion with the team. These cards are on top and they are stacked. Tried to give primary focus on the card but that's not quite convincing, as our primary focus Good to spend which is more exciting for users but still, needs to check with users. However, I got some meaningful insights from the user followed by a discussion with the team... Based on the understanding I made a version of it and did the interaction design for every element.
Creating Intro Page Of Banking app
The intro page has to be helpful, so I decided to put contextual cards on it:
1. Good to spend or Smart spendings with smart accounts, it will scan securely your financial SMS and identify user's banks and transactions for personalized suggestions.
2. Branches & ATMs locator
First of all, let’s make sure that our customers can easily find the nearest branch, ATM, or even partner deals without login. And let’s ensure we are giving the best branch option by providing closing times and line wait times directly on the map through nice markers. It will allow our bank to distribute traffic between branches and make our service more pleasant for customers and employees.
First of all, let’s make sure that our customers can easily find the nearest branch, ATM, or even partner deals without login. And let’s ensure we are giving the best branch option by providing closing times and line wait times directly on the map through nice markers. It will allow our bank to distribute traffic between branches and make our service more pleasant for customers and employees.
3. Where to invest and how much to invest like FD, RD, Mutual fund or Gold, etc.
4. Financial Market trends like Sensex, Gold prices, etc.
5. Loan Eligibility.
Designing Balance And History Dashboard
So, you are logged in. In my dashboard i have some simple design to make it easy to use:
1. Balance statement
2. Monthly income
3. Monthly expenses
4. Money available
5. Category applications
6. Latest transaction history
7. Quick Access menu for every transaction
Now 10 seconds is enough to see clearly your balance statement, monthly income, and expenses. Another 10 seconds and you have a clear understanding of safe-to-spend sum in the category chart. The red and green colors help to easily identify the money in and out.
And what about transactions? You don’t need an hour to study navigation and browse sections, it’s all here. Check your latest transactions list, use an autocomplete search to find an exact transaction, or easily sort them to see only incoming or outgoing transactions.
First version deployed
On-boarding Experience
It is comprised of ...
1. Splash screen; Image represents freedom to achieve ambitious dreams
2. Introduction(USP) of the App; What the things users can do with this app.
3. Biometric and Passcode authentication for better security; As it is a key aspect of any financial business.
4. Couch Marks for first-time users.
App Experience
Final Version
After Testing, observation, feedback from experts, analytics, and lots of brainstorming and rethink over the loopholes. Based on reviews did some tweaks in UI, content design, and optimizing App.
Movement of Happiness
Lesson learned
1. Working in fast-pace: Results were good but it wasn't perfect. The reason we have to launch as early as possible and We can take users gives feedback later. That leads a bad impression on some of the users. Perhaps we could have to make a prototype and get feedback from real users before launching in the market to avoid usability and technical flaws.
2. Universal Compatibility: Basically feature of fetching transaction information from SMS was really a good idea. However, this option wasn't available for iPhones. That's we are losing iPhone users every time and we cannot change design for the option for iPhone.
