Miguel Murguia_Design Thinking Exercise

The Company Background

Whole Bank is a financial institution operating in the small town of Framingham, Massachusetts. Carol Holmes is the head of the Innovation Department of Whole Bank and is leading the effort to bring their traditional banking options into the digital age.

Their overall goal is to offer customers an innovative and pain-free way to save and manage money by creating a user-friendly app experience while traveling.

Here are some of the pain points the Innovation Department of Whole Bank detected:

• Customers may lose their cards
• Some shops don’t allow credit/debit card payments
• Physical cards are susceptible to damage. Cards’ chips, magnetic bands, and contactless technology can deteriorate during the trip

The Research

To support the Innovation Department of Whole Bank in building an appropriate user-friendly solution to their customer’s app experience, I prepared an interview guide and interviewed five mobile banking app users. After listening to the research participants I sorted through their replies and found that permission request, budgets, recent history, ease of use and convenience were identified as major pain-points. Participants expressed feelings of frustration and disconnection to their money when they do not have the information they need or cannot access it quickly.

The Potential Solution

By creating a Travel Mode, Whole Bank is able to address concerns with security since it is already embedded into the app and activated with a simple click. Travel mode also simplifies the existing app to the vital features identified by users while paying during travel such as;

• History of recent transactions
• currency conversion calculator on home and payment screens
• Simple layout
• Transfers between travel companions
• Travel Budget/Balance

The Key Learnings

Working on this project was challenging. Once the initial anxiety of a new challenge passed, I was able to enter into a state of flow as I prepared and executed the interview process. By the time I started sketching out possible solutions and rapid prototyping, I felt connected to the project and the needs of the participants.

In hindsight, I realize that I could have gained more insight into participants experience with their favorite mobile banking apps while traveling by diving deeper into their travel experience by asking participants to share their travel stories.