Design thinking exercise

Júlia Farkas
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

Whole Bank App

MY CLIENT

Whole Bank was created in the US offering an innovative process of saving and managing money. However, Credit/Debit System showed big inconveniences for traveling customers.

My task is to develop an App creating a new payment feature which allows customers to pay with their mobile device only instead of using cash or card. In order to do so, I will start interviewing 5 users who travel and use their card abroad to find a solution for the main problems.

THE INTERVIEW

I have interviewed 5 friends about the payment methods they use when they travel abroad. Here are the questions:

  1. How often do you travel abroad?

2. When traveling, what payment method you use: cash or card? Why? In case you paid by card, did you have any problems? Which ones?

3. Did you try paying via mobile app? If yes, tell me a bit about your experience. If not, why didn’t you?

4. Which elements would you include in the app to feel more comfortable?

After interviewing all 5, they all paid at least once by card when they were abroad. But they were all concerned about the same problems:

MAIN PROBLEMS

  • Not familiar with mobile payment method (because it is not easy and it takes more time)
  • Transaction fee when paying by card
  • They find payment app insecure
  • Cannot pay offline
  • Cards might get lost

I decided to solve two issues that customers were the most concerned of:

  • Security problem
  • Offline payment

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

On one hand, I created a new feature inside the banking app. This feature is called PAY & CARRY (ideated from the wholesale logo CASH & CARRY) which allows customers to pay offline as well as online, and it also means to pay faster because users will not need to enter their account. This option will guide customers to a single option payment: QR code scanning. The contactless method of credit or debit cards will not be available in order to shorten the payment process. One of the interviewees told me that once he wanted to pay with an App using contactless payment method and he got aware that it was the same as paying by card: he had to wait for the waiter again (the first time because of the bill) to bring the little machine to pay. If he had had QR method payment, he would not have waited again and could just simply scan the code and leave. This is the main reason I did not want to add Credit/Debit System option.

On the other hand, in order to solve the security problem, I added a feature through which users can decide the maximum price they are willing to pay without entering PIN/fingerprint to speed up payment process for small amount of transactions. The other feature is an extra window added after scanning the QR code, where the user confirms the payment. In that way, the app shows to be even more secure.

PAPER PROTOTYPE DESIGN

THINGS I LEARNED THROUGH THE PROCESS

It was challenging to create the first sketching of an App. First I thought about adding both card and QR options. But it would slow down the process. The second thing I learned is that paying attention to people’s feedback is crucial because it is the best way to find out problems and create solutions.

Júlia Farkas

Written by

UX/UI designer in training. Translator and Interpreter

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