Design for Finance 101 — Don’t design only for the “user”

Vikas Prabhu
Nov 4 · 4 min read

One way to make sure your brand new (re)design of your Financial Services product or service fails is to design only for “the user”.

You read that right.

But don’t we need User Centered Design?

Yes, but also no. The astute among you have noticed the only and the quotes around “the user”.

Still with me after the clickbait title? Great.

The Customer is not the only User

Let me be clear — I’m not telling you to completely ignore the user. User centered design is critical to a company’s success. But often, user centered design is reduced to customer centered design.

In the case of businesses that provide an interface via a product or service — which is most of them — the customer is rarely ever the only user. Just as a business has several moving parts, products and services these days have several types of users. And this is especially the case in the Finance domain.

There may be several reasons as to why this misplaced sense of “laser focus” happens. I place the fault largely on what businesses and even many design practitioners interpret what design means. And this is one of several factors that make the field still somewhat nascent. In any case, the definition of design itself is evolving beyond the interface and into the structures of organisations and businesses themselves.

It’s great that businesses have embraced that design is one of the key drivers of success. But many have a one-dimensional view of what the definition of design is. Most still think of design as a way of making the experience seamless for the customer alone. Or worse, they just focus on making things look pretty for the customer.

Desirable does not equal Viable

Typically, design, as practiced by design agencies and even in-house design teams, is inherently customer-centric. That is to say the focus is primarily, if not exclusively, on the desirability aspect of products and services.

Like I mentioned earlier, the design field is still nascent in many ways. And so the initial boom (and success) of such design methods is fueled by this desirability perspective.

But just because something may look or be desirable does not mean it will be good for business.

A classic example of this is found in the airline industry. Yes, every ticket purchasing customer wants more legroom while paying the same price. But increasing legroom, which clearly is desirable for the customer, is not viable for business since it would mean decreasing the number of passengers. And this in turn would mean increasing the ticket price per passenger.

To design for Finance is to design for Business

Design must have varied focus when in comes to designing for the Financial sector. Pardon what I’m sure sounds like an oxymoron, but this varied focus is especially needed for this domain. (I’d argue it is needed in most domains, but that’s a whole other conversation.)

This does not necessarily mean parallelism, or indeed having to increase the size of the design team. A helpful method to apply focus is to think about design as a hierarchy.

Start by thinking of the product’s or service’s basic usability.

Is this thing a product? Can people use it?

Next, think about the product’s or service’s usefulness.

Does this help accomplish the user’s goal or task? Will people use it?

Finally, think of how the product or service satisfies a business goal.

Does this help generate revenue? Does this thing contribute to the business’s success?

This is a simple framework that ensures both superficial and deeper business needs are taken care of.

Success means different things to different parts and levels of the business.

Hence the necessity of this care. For instance, the sales and marketing team would need great value propositions and a slick product experience, while the back office would need seamless visibility of information to make business decisions in a timely fashion.

How it’s done

There are several aspects to achieving good viable design; some really smart people have written several things about this. But even then, I’d argue it’s not an exact science since the definition of design is evolving beyond UI Design into UX and Service Design, and even past that into Business Design. In future posts, I’ll try to list some things me and our design team keep in mind.

Of course, there are standard concepts you’d design for. But a good chunk of a designer’s time will be spent in understanding the various moving parts of a business. To be successful in design in the Finance domain, we need to care about everything from surface-level usability to deeper business needs. It is how you would serve and, indeed, uncover value at various levels. Tying features and concepts to improved business processes and results are a huge win. And this ensures the design work we do is truly valuable.


I’m Vikas, and I’m a design practitioner based in Bangalore, India. I’m also a Design Manager at The Syndicate Tech, where I work with smart, passionate people on developing global products and services at the intersection of Finance, Tech and Business. You can find me on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

The Syndicate Tech

The Emergent Future Delivered

Vikas Prabhu

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Product and Service Design practitioner working on creating the next gen platform for Digital Financial Services and Business Processes for emerging economies.

The Syndicate Tech

The Emergent Future Delivered

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