It’s time for data-driven
banking interfaces.
Combining Data Visualisation and User Experience Design
Do you use an app on your phone or tablet to check your bank balances?You’re not alone. New research by the british Nationwide Building Society highlighted that people were more likely to check their account balance (44%) than their work email (34%) whilst on the move.
The Bank of America also reveals in their “Trends in Consumer Mobility Report 2014” that the most commonly accessed function at mobile banking apps is checking account balances and statements (81%).
So people like to check their balance on the move and probably analyze their transaction history.
But how come that the currently available banking apps have such a poor user experience for that task?
Wouldn’t it be interesting to extend this approach of analyzing your account and to offer new insights into your financial data? Could it even be possible to visualize your account in another method to help you save more money?
With all that in mind, I asked myself how I would approach the User Interface for a simple banking app that focuses around automatically tracked, personal expenses.
I challenged myself with a quick design exercise and started a side project over two weekends.
The future of financial services is simple, intelligent
and based on data-driven interfaces.
The concept is based on the idea about analyzing your data based on time, categories and places. With the help of interactive data visualizations optimized for mobile devices, patterns should be easily visible.
The mobile information visualisation pattern library mobileinfovis.com reveals that the currently most used chart type for analyzing financial data on mobile devices are circular like donut charts. Many fintech and banking apps such as Moven or Westpac also use donut charts to visualize your current spendings.
Therefore, I haven’t used any donut chart but used an interactive treemap to show in a quick and easy way the highest expenses. A line chart presents the time-based spendings and also tries to predict the future development — a feature that I haven’t seen in any banking app, yet.
This is an early stage concept that was build as a side project. It would require much more work and real life testing to make this concept ready for market.
The good news is that with the rise of the fintech sector since a few years, new payment methods and approaches have entered the market and with them better designed user experiences. It will be exciting to see how fast traditional banks will modernize their apps with new approaches, as well.
