Five insights from five years in fintech
My biggest lessons as a UX researcher
If there has been one universal theme that has emerged from my experience conducting research on financial technology products over the past several years, it’s this: People who seek out fintech products want to feel “in control” of their finances.
That may seem obvious, but in the world of product development and design, our instincts can actually lead us in the opposite direction. In trying to help consumers solve their financial problems and achieve their goals, we may over-simplify, over-automate, and do all the work for them. In session after session, I’ve heard users say they need help — yet in reality, they prefer an option with more friction, which requires more work from them. The reason for this apparent paradox? The frictionless option didn’t leave them feeling involved or informed enough about the decision. By removing too much friction or otherwise over-solutionizing, we actually diminish users’ sense of being in control.
But fear not! Below, I’ve listed five insights we can use to ensure our design solutions give users the feelings of autonomy and empowerment they want, while still providing the information and functionality they may be currently lacking.
1. Users don’t want to have every decision made for them.
In fact, users want to be presented with options and information that make them feel they are making good, informed decisions.
Part of feeling in control of your finances is feeling that you have autonomy. Even when users hand over some elements of financial decision-making to a product, they want to feel they have been smart in making that decision and that they understand and have confidence in their decision.
Even those users who take a more “hands-off” approach to their finances want to feel like they have made a wise decision in how, and to whom, they hire out management of their money. Services like automated saving and investing have tested well with users because they tap into both the feeling of responsible decision-making (deciding to save or invest more) and the feeling of smartly outsourcing the painful parts of the process (remembering to transfer money; figuring out what to invest in). These products are poised to strike the right balance of providing a sense of control while removing the parts people would rather not do themselves.
2. Users want explanations for recommendations.
Fintech products often make suggestions for courses of action or for products and services — and too often, these recommendations are tossed at users without explanation. But recommendations should always come with context. Why is this being recommended to me? Why is this option better than other options? Why should I trust this recommendation?
Saying “based on your information” is not sufficient. But what is the appropriate level of explanation? This is where knowing your users is essential. For more informed users, simple badging might suffice: “lowest interest rate,” “lowest monthly payment,” “most popular.” Other users might require more of a narrative.
If you are worried about cluttering up a design with lengthy explanations, progressive disclosure can be a practical solution: show people a high-level statement, then allow them to click through to learn more. But remember that if your first explanation isn’t generally clear to your audience, you may lose them.
3. Users want options, but not too many.
This is what we might call a “Goldilocks scenario:” there has been, in my experience, a consistent sense of what’s too little, what’s too much, and what’s just right (the “sweet spot”). In fintech, we’re often asking users to make selections from a set of options: credit cards or loan offers, featured stocks, account types. With too few options, users feel like they are not making an informed decision; with too many, they feel overwhelmed.
I’ve seen very interesting designs that help people get to a single customized option fail to resonate with users because they feel they are giving up too much control: they feel choices have been made for them. On the other hand, I’ve seen designs that attempt to present every possible option, and those also fail because users feel there is no way to effectively evaluate every option: they feel unable to make a choice.
Finding the sweet spot for how many options to present is key to making users feel both well-informed and capable of making a choice. For users who want to see more, you can always provide a link to a longer page with additional options (many users have said to me, “I wouldn’t click on that, but I like knowing it’s there.”)
The sweet spot, by the way, seems to be about 5–6 options.
4. Users want to compare options side by side.
Making decisions about things like credit card or loan offers is really hard. There are a lot of variables, and it can be very difficult to compare those variables if they are not presented in a way that makes them easy to evaluate against each other.
This means users often respond well to grid designs, unsexy as they may be. While more novel approaches may spark the interest of users at first glance, the design that makes side-by-side comparison easiest always wins because it makes information easy to digest and gives users the feeling of control that is essential for successful design.
5. Users want insightful feedback — not to be told they’ve done wrong.
When we make users feel like they’ve done something wrong, their reaction isn’t to change the behavior; instead, it is to become frustrated with the product. There’s a lot of behavioral science to back this up (check out Amy Bucher’s new book Engaged (2020) for an extended exploration of design and behavior change, especially the section called “The Feedback Playbook”), but I have also seen it in numerous conversations with users. By sending signals a user is out of control, which they may already know, we can make them feel even more out of control and helpless, causing them to give up.
From charts and labels that turn red to messages warning “You are over budget,” it is very easy to fall into the trap of telling users where they have fallen short on their good intentions. We also don’t know what may have been intentional: for instance, finally spending on a big expense you’ve been saving for may look bad from a monthly cash flow perspective, but good behavior actually got you there.
Framing behaviors in a neutral or positive way helps users maintain motivation and absorb information. To say it another way, users want to know what they can do to meet their financial goals, not to be told how they’ve screwed up. And that positive feedback helps in both the short term and the long run.
Conclusion: Some practical advice
“Put yourself in your users’ shoes.” That’s advice that is often repeated, but it’s also easier said than done. It doesn’t just mean enumerating users’ problems or questions; it also means being able to understand what they need from your experience and how they make decisions. For fintech companies, this means not just addressing users’ financial goals but also fulfilling higher-order needs, like the feeling of being in control. Addressing those big picture needs can mean going against some base designer instincts (like trying to create the most frictionless experience possible), but they in turn allow you to more successfully fulfill your users’ needs and to differentiate yourself within the fintech marketplace.
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