User Research, Information Architecture, & Interaction Design - Financial Lender

Financial Mobile App, Sogeti Consultant
February 2018 - October 2018, May 2019 - Present

The Challenge:
Create a consumer facing greenfield financial mobile application in a heavily federal and state regulated sector.

Key Wins:

  • 60,000 active customers and $20,000,000 in revenue generated in 3 months; 250,000 customers and $100,000,000 generated in 6 months.

  • 74% return customers.

  • 24% of revenue generated via the mobile application.

  • Initial launch only 3 months from project kick-off.

  • Replaced a 15 minute process requiring a physical store and assistance from a CSR with a 2 minute process using the mobile app.

  • The application has an average 4.7 rating (compared to the 3.1 rating of competitors) across the Apple and Play stores.

  • The client hired multiple internal UX resources to assist on other projects as a direct result of seeing the benefit we provided.

 

User Research

To evangelize the customer's perspective, the entire Agile team participated in contextual inquires. I conducted a proto-persona workshop to establish key personas that were then continuously tweaked and validated through further contextual inquires and ad-hoc usability tests of the payment flow.

TMX - Personas_censored.jpg

These personas were also used as a basis to conduct a customer journey workshop for the client's Directors across departments for future initatives both inside and outside the scope of the mobile application. The solutions brainstormed would impact customer behaviors driving improvements towards key business objectives. Intentionally vague details about this workshop and its outputs are best discussed in person.

JourneyMapOverview.png
DoGo Map Screenshot.JPG

Information Architecture - DOGO Mapping

Along with user research, white-boarding a DOGO map with the Product Owner and Solutions Architect was a lean approach for us to think through and discuss the overall structure of the application during Sprint 0. It was also a physically large work product that their organization as a whole could see establishing credibility for our process.

 

Interaction Design (2 Week Sprint Cycles)

Working in a true Agile environment means that the work products of a User Experience advocate are a tool for communication, nothing more. They are not the user experience. The user's experience is the user experience.

As a tool for communication, screen-flows served as the most effective way to create, refine, and vet interaction and task flows with various stakeholders within the client including: the Director of Project Management, Direct of Marketing, the Regulatory Compliance Manager, Senior Solutions Architect, and our Agile team.

While screen-flows were approved, I worked closely with our Visual Designer to ensure high fidelity compositions matched the interactions needed. I routinely created prototypes for key initiatives which we could use for usability testing at the client’s retail locations, highlighting areas of improvement and settling heated discussions.

Each story also included a UX review task allowing me to work closely with the team to ensure the developed experience of each story was polished. I also negotiated for a UX Clean-up story; a 1 point story each sprint which I could use to refine the experience ensuring that micro interactions were accounted for and the little big details that matter were built.

Screenshot from iTunes

Screenshot from iTunes