Interview with Christian Hertlein — Head of Design at N26
If there’s one thing that immediately stands out when using N26, it’s its unique, clean, and intuitive design. But, this isn’t just about aesthetics. In this conversation with N26’s Head of Design Christian Hertlein, we discussed the guiding principles of N26’s design and how putting users front and center has enabled us to create a product that helps users without intruding on their space.
Can you introduce yourself and what you do at N26?
I’m Christian and I’m the Head of design at N26, being responsible for various designers in the design team as well as product development. I help to mentor them, but also to incorporate strategies and frameworks from the design mind perspective.
How do you define User experience?
User experience is the experience that users have with our product. It doesn’t only mean that we are talking about the app, it’s basically all kind of touch points with the user. Every time or place where we interact with the user, we can design this experience either on Instagram or Facebook, or in classic marketing channels linking to the website or the articles on Medium. We are capable of creating a kind of experience, a feeling, when users use our core product — the N26 app — that lets people to use our app without any instructions, ideally without any questions or concerns, earning their full trust while avoiding security issues
When it comes to UX in banking compared with years ago (where you had an agency and a dedicated banker) how is it different with us? How did it evolve into today’s N26?
I think what is interesting is the fact that we incorporate all touch points under one umbrella. With this approach, we are in full control and are able to make the experience more attractive to the user. Because we understand the user well enough we can target him or her directly. At the same time, we also can serve them with the right product based on the knowledge we gathered from user research, trends, and insights from customer feedback collected by our customer service.
One of our mottos at N26 is that we are “building a bank people love to use”. (When you say that to people that they will love their bank, that sounds crazy,) What is the idea behind that sentence?
The idea behind that sentence is to imagine a world where people are not scared anymore of using a banking product. That’s what we call “peace of mind,” that you are in control as user of your finances. We help you to make the best out of your financial situation by providing you the right product. But we also help by being present at the precise moment that you decide that we should be there. Basically, we don’t interrupt the user in a moment when they don’t want to think about their finances. We’re present when they interact: with things like instant transaction notifications. Even this small vibrating moment in your pocket helps you to understand that you are still in control,. That’s what people want. They want to stay in control without constantly having to think about their finances. They need somebody who can take care of that.
When you talk about design often people think “photoshop”. Is that the reality of your job or not at all?
Obviously when people talk about design they think about the visual aspect of it, but design is much more. It is a mindset. It is how you actually approach difficulties or problems in general, which means that design also includes the understanding of the human, the user. That means that we should have empathy as designers and understand how to use design research or qualitative research to understand what people care about, what their needs are, what the problems are, what their situation is. And based on that we are able to shape the environment that helps people to handle their finance accordingly. Design is one angle. We use our skill set to create something from insights our user research generates to understand and iterate further. This is that what people thought about when we talked with them in the first place — that we’d create different cycles of iterations and ultimately deliver a product that people can use without thinking too much about what was possible to do wrong.
Along with the vibration notification, do you have any other example of design in the N26 app which impact in the user?
Another example is probably our spending statistics which are automatically generated based on your expenses. People are using different apps to keep track of their expenses. So, in order to having an overview and maintain control over what they spend on certain things, we automatically generate — every time a user makes a transaction — statistics that illustrate their spending behaviour. It’s not really mind blowing that we are able to do that, since there are also a few banks out there that allow users to get these overviews. Sometimes we often feel that banks are not interested in serving this kind of information, despite having easy access to it. We are in this position because we have this information; we want to be as transparent as possible while helping people to understand their expending behaviour is. That’s why we think understanding and getting a bit more education about their financial situation is so important to users.
What do you say to people who believe that they can not have a good experience with a bank?
Firstly, I would say that they haven’t tried our app. If people say that, they usually think about the physical experience that they have, with somebody in a branch, going to some place, having issues with their bank account, talking with somebody. If you take Airbnb as an example, an experience like that is something that people never even imagined before it was released. Recognizing that stories, human communication and pictures are the core elements of this hotel disrupted business. But more crucial they understood their own role and how to position themselves as a connector and friendly moderator with empathy.
Linking this back to bank experiences, it’s about understanding the customer, identifying the role of various financial aspects and how to address them in an appropriate way.
And we’re making big steps towards that.
Interested in joining one of our teams as we grow?
If you’d like to join us on the journey of building the mobile bank the world loves to use, have a look at some of the Design roles we’re looking for here.
