User Experience — XCash, money changer app
Introduction
This is the end of week 7 where I collaborated with project mates, Chrse and Peter on an interesting UX project for 2 weeks. We came up with our own project to solve and defined our project scope based on user problem statements. What happens when you put a group of 3 aspiring UX designers with web design(myself), graphics design(Chrse) and banking & finance background(Peter)?
What is the project about
We will build XCash, a Money Changing prototype based on our User Experience research findings. The area that we are focusing on is the money changing business in Singapore and we chose DBS as our company brand.
Problem statement
Users are confused with reading and comparing different currency boards.
Users are looking for the best rates.
Users are looking for convenience.
Opportunities
The process of changing money has not changed in maybe hundreds of years, despite advancements in technology, efficiency, and customer service. We wanted to find out if the money changing space can be disrupted in the way uber has to taxis and airbnb to hotels. Do people want a better experience in the connected digital economy when it comes to cash?
Research Methods
We use the double diamond model created by the UK design council in 2005 as a UX methodology for our project.
Discovery — Screeners & Context Inquiries.
To kickoff the project, we started to recruit our users online by setting up screeners which is a list of questions to collect demographics, behaviour and motivations on money changing.
98% of respondents in SG use Money changers
78% of respondents are willing to wait for better rates
30% are willing to go out of their way for better rates
This insight resonated with what we identified in opportunities, the main reliance on money changers and getting better rates has not changed despite digital advancements.
For some context inquiry study, we approached a few money changers as subject matter experts. If there was a platform like XCash, what would it be helpful for them, and what would they like to see. We also inquired how they would interact with technology like XCash.
User Interviews
From our screeners of 56 respondents, we conducted 9 interviews with suitable people to probe deeper into the whys and hows of changing money before travel.
Affinity Mapping — Essences
We started to affinity map the insights we got from the interview notes and found the essences. Most were concerned about rates, especially if a larger amount but didn’t enjoy the money changer experience — the confusing rate boards, long queues, and sometimes unfriendly changers.
Essences
- I am confused about the currency exchange rate board.
- I don’t like to wait in long queues.
- I don’t want to go out of the way to change money.
- I will go out of my way for better rates, especially if it’s a larger amount.
- I change money when it is near the travel date.
- I want to avoid the hassle of changing leftover money.
- I need to check rates online before I travel.
- I use money changers because I can trust them and they are convenient.
- I change small amounts with familiar people to save time.
Persona
Using affinity mapping, we were able to derive our persona, Sandy Loh. A Persona is a representation of similar demographic users who exhibit behavioral patterns, use of technology or products, customer service preferences and the like.
Journey Map
Here’s a journey map of what a typical person experiences when changing money.
The pain points come from being :
unable to find best market rate for money changers online,
feeling annoyed waiting in the queue line at the money changer,
feeling confused looking at the currency board and doing calculations, unhappy that she does not get a good rate.
We will use these pain points to address the needs later.
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
We study and compared features in the current market with some existing brands.
We compared Uber and Carousell for their rating systems and chatting system respectively. The chart below showed available features currently.
User Flows
User flows are the path a user follows through interface and interaction points to complete a task. We use user flows to typically learn and understand task paths of users, identifying opportunities to optimise flows and the designing of new flows.
After studying the various user flows, we came up with the following user flow for XCash.
Considerations — Technology Goals and Platform Choice
To take technology goals into consideration, we decided that a mobile app would be the best platform due to several advantages.
- 24/7 access,
- Mobile portability — e.g. research online on the phone,
- More responsive performance,
- Less cluttered — this depends on the website design, but apps tend to be more streamlined,
- Another marketing avenue by getting on to the app stores,
- Button in users’ homescreen — Remember who you are, a way to get in front of your customers.
Features Prioritisation
Below are the list of possible features we came up with. The reason why most of the features seem to be in high priority is because they are core features for the app to meet the Minimum Viable Product or MVP. Basically, the minimum viable product (MVP) is a product which has just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development.
We did some technical consultation with developers to help us understand the feasibility, sorting the effort level and requirements of the features that we proposed. Low effort features can be implemented using APIs available in the market such as pulling live mid market rates, reviews/ratings or filing dispute forms submission. High effort features such as a customised chat system or notifications would require custom coding. Through the consultation process, the features that we proposed are mostly feasible.
Ideation and Prototype UI Design
Based on earlier essences, we group them further into 4 categories to address our persona Sandy’s needs.
- Confused currency Exchange rate board
- Familiarity & Reliability
- Convenience
- Best Rates
We started with paper prototyping to design a basic UI interface and to test the basic flow by addressing these pain points.
Paper and digital Prototypes
We did 2 versions of paper and digital prototypes each. The paper prototypes are used to test the basic flow.
Digital Prototype Version 1
From the paper prototype, we are able to design our UI. We designed a draft version 1 for testing on invision. The iterations help us to improve our ongoing tests and we were confident enough to update our final prototype with an updated design along with ongoing feedback changes.
Usability Test Results
Prototype Future Steps
From the usability report the final version included some real world testers, manifesting a common trend in map confusion with the final prototype. For future iterations, we would want to modify the user flow and improve the design UI as proposed below and test more.
Changes we want to make is to reduce the decision point early in the user flow by moving the map to after the results page depicted in the red circle. When users tap on a peer/money changer, it would show a map of peers/money changers around the location where they can tap on to check profiles such as best rates, distance, ratings and reviews.
Heuristic Evaluation
Lastly. we applied Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics for user interface design to our prototype to get rule of thumbs feedback from potential problems. Our prototype was able to meet the heuristics guidelines.
Final Recommendations
For future steps, there are many more features and possibilities we can hope to implement.
This is our final prototype demo.
Takeaways and Conclusion
This project has been the most thorough yet to date, given the short 2 weeks for prototyping. I feel really proud of this work we have churned out. We stretched our creativity, adapted each other work habits, grew our knowledge and explored new ways to present ideas. I would like to thank the many people who have helped and advice me in this project. Lastly, shoutouts to Team XCash. You guys are awesome.
