My first Design Thinking experiment
Design Thinking Exercise
Experimenting a new knowledge for the first time is always a good feeling. And I’m having a great time being part of this brand new project for Whole Bank, a young institution with main operating offices in Massachussets, at the United States. They are always looking to improve their products and customers experience, that’s why we’re currently working in their next project: payments with their mobile application. Now customers can forget about the credit cards, debit cards and the cash money, they will do their payments just using their smartphones, specially when traveling.
The main problems I found when I did a research and interviewed the customers was this:
- Customers are afraid of payments in a different currency. Much of them had have issues with their banks for the elevated currency exchanges.
- They also want information at the moment of the payment. They wanted a confirmation of how much they spent and the equivalent in their currency.
- They want simplicity. They don’t want to carry 2 or 3 different credit or debit cards just to see which one works at the establishment they are paying.
- They want an open and universal accepted system, that they can use everywhere they go.
- They don’t want anything complicated, they want and easy and clear processes.
To solve this problems we worked on a special interface design, based in all the information we collect from the customers, focusing in all the their needs and requirements. We put special attention into develop simple processes, looking for an experience specially: easy, agile and effective.
In the following video you can see the project proposal:
Some of the key things that I learned throughout this process are:
- It is important to pay attention to the different point of views of the customers, it can hide a lot of real valuable information.
- As designers we need to focus on the costumers needs and requirements to improve the final experience. At the end is the best for the customer and for the business.
- Even if we think that “everything is done” there’s always something new to discover.
- Simplicity is always the best way. As they say “less is more”.
