Analytics app for the bank managers — A collaborative UX case study
A business analytics and reporting app created via a mentored process involving user interviews and a design sprint.
Role: Product Designer, UX Researcher and Sprint Master
Team: Aamon Das, Adarsh Goldar, Ankita Thakur, Sainath Reddy, Shruti Khopkar, Suvra Shaw (Me 😊) and Yesheshreeghorpadeuiux
Mentored by: Raktim Chatterjee
Time: About 2 months (Aug 20 to Oct 14)
TL;DR
Objective
To design a data intelligence software for bank managers at branches to monitor daily operations, offer intelligent trend analysis, and generate customized reports without overwhelming them with information.
Results
Usability tests showed that bank managers could quickly tailor the dashboard to meet their requirements. They liked how the information was organised and how much information was visible at a glance.
Future Scope
Future improvements to this project can include adding a dark mode option, making the SaaS app mobile-friendly, and adding more features.
Problem Statement
Branch managers need real-time insights and intelligent trend analysis to make informed decisions in today’s data-driven banking industry. Financial software must also offer safe access to sensitive financial data, comply with banking regulations, and integrate easily with existing banking systems. As a result, building an efficient solution that provides intelligence based on current and past trends is critical.
My role in the project
Even though I contributed to the entire project, there were some areas where I put in more upfront effort —
- Maintained the project on Notion and facilitated the design sprint.
- Worked on interview questions and conducted user interviews.
- Conducted a competitive analysis of Core Banking Solutions (CBS) and business intelligence softwares.
- Helped set up IBM’s Carbon Design System on Figma with our branding and configured its interactive components.
- Created the user flow and high-fidelity prototype for the dashboard.
Our Research Process
We were working on a green-field project, so we needed to research about India’s BFSI sector before designing the interface. We also had to develop empathy for the tasks that a bank manager had to perform daily.
Desk Research
We conducted desk research by reading research papers and news articles and then recording our findings on a Figjam whiteboard. We framed our interview questions for our user research based on these findings.
User Interviews
We contacted bank managers via contact, Linkedin, or by visiting the bank. We set up 4 interviews with both active and retired managers who had worked in Indian villages and larger cities such as Pune and Kolkata.
We noticed that some insights gained from interviews were generic because bank managers were reluctant to reveal sensitive information.
- We changed our questions to be more open-ended to encourage users to share their experiences.
- We were able to avoid bias by asking follow-up questions.
We conducted more interviews with the new questions. The results of this primary research provided us with deep insights into our users’ identities, lives, and struggles.
Competitive Analysis
According to our design brief, our product will integrate with the bank’s existing Core Banking Solution (CBS). I read press releases and reviews from credible peer-review sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius to learn more about the CBS systems that are market leaders in India.
Research Synthesis
We took key insights from our research findings and pasted them as sticky notes to the Figjam board for this activity.
We then used drag-voting for 15 minutes to categorise the insights based on common themes.
Our mentor introduced us to design processes such as Agile, Google Design Sprints, and Lean UX. Due to time constraints, we decided on a 5-day remote design sprint for our project.
Design Sprint
Stage1️⃣: Map
I chose Miro as our workspace because it was familiar to everyone and included remote design sprint templates. I set up the board overnight, keeping separate spaces for each activity with examples and directions. We began the day at 6:00 a.m. with an icebreaker, followed by a Lightning Talk.
Using notes from the talk, we created the How Might We statements (HMWs). We had an hour to frame as many HMWs as we wanted. Then, I gave 15 minutes to copy the HMWs into groups based on common themes. Finally, the HMWs were dot-voted for 6 minutes using Miro’s in-app voting.
After voting on the HMWs, we moved on to the next activity: defining the Sprint Goals for our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and the Long-Term Objectives, which must be met within 1–2 years of our product’s release. This activity had a time limit of 45 minutes. After that, we put them through a 2-minute dot voting process. As the facilitator, I gave everyone 6 votes for Sprint Goals and 7 votes for Long-Term Objectives.
Next, we spent 30 minutes deriving Sprint Questions (“Can we…?”) from Sprint Goals. The 51 framed Sprint Questions were then checked for duplicates and dot-voted, with each participant receiving 8 votes.
Then, using the 20 HMWs and 12 Sprint Questions filtered in earlier activities, we framed the goals for our user journey map.
Finally, we moved on to Day 1’s final activity: User Journey mapping for these goals. I gave each person 2 goals to map. Each user journey had 4 stages: Onboarding, Dashboard, Findability and Core action. Decision points were used in areas where the flow had condition checks.
After nearly 10 hours of brainstorming, our Day 1 finally came to an end.
Stage2️⃣: Sketch
We began Day 2 with an icebreaker at 6 a.m. The first activity was called “Lightning Demos,” where we had to share screenshots and images of products or experiences that we found inspiring and could use. Using Miro’s in-app visual notes, we took notes on key points.
We moved on to our next activity, Crazy 8, in which we had 8 minutes to draw 8 different iterations of our assigned user journey goal on A4 sheets. We had 3 rounds of Crazy8s for our 24 goals, timed by Miro’s in-app timer.
Every Crazy8 sketch of the 24 goals was put to a dot vote, with each team member having 24 votes. The 2-minute voting activity yielded 21 top goals, each with one sketch.
Top-voted goals were expanded into Solution Sketches, each with at least 3 steps. We divided ourselves into 3 teams, each with 7 goals.
Analysing the solution sketches took some time. Then, we had an infinite-vote dot voting. A person could vote for any goal except those given to his or her team. This process produced a heatmap of the most popular goals.
Then we did a 30-minute Speed Critique in which the person who worked on each goal explained it. Anyone who thought that flow could be improved was invited to share their thoughts after the explanation.
We each voted with 2 red dots in the Straw Poll to decide which of the 7 goals we wanted to prototype in the next stage. The voting took 2 minutes.
We then told our mentor about our vote choices. After hearing our explanation, our mentor narrowed our goals by giving his Super Vote to the 5 most relevant flows based on our design brief. We also decided who would work on which goal in the next activity.
Stage3️⃣: Decide
Following the warm-up, we decide the steps a user can take to finish a task in our next activity, User Test Flow. They start at the user’s entry point and guide them through a series of steps to a successful outcome.
The same pairs then moved on to Storyboarding the goals for which they had created the flows. This critical step enabled us to visualise our user experience and identify potential usability issues.
Before we started prototyping, we made a moodboard to decide on the visual branding for our product. We chose a shade of blue as our primary colour and the geometric typeface ‘Lato’ for our typography after reviewing the brand styles of other BFSI products.
Due to time constraints, we all agreed to use IBM’s Carbon Design System, as it suited our B2B SaaS product and had extensive documentation. The data visualisations were adapted from a Figma community file.
We also scheduled talks with design experts like Abhishek Dubey and Prasad Vanjare around this activity, who observed our progress and provided valuable feedback on our design process.
Stage4️⃣: Prototype
Despite some initial difficulties with Figma’s Prototyping feature, we created an interactive prototype for our high-fidelity design.
Using elements from the design system and our product’s branding, 7 of us completed the prototype flows—
Using all of the aforementioned prototype flows, we created a video.
Despite the difficulties we had finding users for the usability testing, we managed to find 2 branch managers. We then send invitations to the participants. We also created a list of 26 tasks based on the project’s scope and set a few User Test Questions to get input on the overall experience.
Stage5️⃣: Test
We performed Prototype Glitch Testing by connecting each pair’s flow. Finally, we had 2 insightful User Testing sessions with bank managers, gathering feedback on the tasks we had prepared ahead of time.
“First time in history, someone has thought about the banker and not about the end-customer.”
Users praised the visual design, editable widget feature, and quantity of visible information on the dashboard. Users expected a full flow for features we excluded from our scope, and they also found some tasks challenging to finish.
In Wall of Justice, we started with cards for the user’s background, testing experience, and the 26 tasks, each with its screen. We then use sticky notes to capture and visualise user feedback and observations for the tasks.
Final Evaluation
We presented our project to a panel of 3 experienced UX practitioners, Hsu (Robert) Ka An, Madhuri Vipparla and Aditya Naik, our mentor Raktim Sir, and a lively audience. The evaluators advised us —
“What is the one thing you want your audience to take away from your presentation? Make sure everything you say and show supports that!”
Conclusion
Finally, business intelligence solutions can provide bank managers with real-time trends on loan, mutual fund, deposits, etc. Our project was praised by both usability testers and UX evaluators. Doing an intense remote project with so many new people and picking up so many fresh techniques was a fantastic experience.
Key Learnings
- Our user-centered design process enabled us to create engaging experiences, from user interviews to user testing.
- Every person in my team put a unique flavour to the mix, drawing from backgrounds in computer science, architecture, engineering, etc. During discussions, our differing perspectives would often spark brilliant ideas.
- We paid close attention to detail in this process, from digging deeper with follow-up interview questions to micro-interactions in prototyping.
- We learned more about how a product is ideated in a design-mature process thanks to an iterative process and input from industry experts.
Time to wrap up the case study
I hope you found this article informative and creative. Please get in touch if you have any questions, suggestions, or opportunities (my LinkedIn). I would be delighted to have a conversation with you.
Thank you for reading till the end! 😄
