Modernization of a Mobile Banking App
Delivering modern best-in-class mobile experience to banking customers
Problem
Users have consistently reported that our mobile app feels clunky, outdated, and falls short of the high standards they expect from modern mobile experiences. The app does not adhere to UX best practices or current mobile design standards, lacking consistency and a cohesive visual language. Additionally, the use of technical jargon and “bank-speak” creates a disconnect, making the experience less intuitive and engaging for users.
My role
In this project, I led a team of UX designers, copywriters, and UX researchers, driving design strategy and establishing processes aimed at efficient delivery against business objectives. I facilitated design reviews and stakeholder workshops, collaborated closely with technical architects, product owners, as well as business leaders across the organization.
Challenges
The biggest challenge in a project of this scale was aligning timelines and processes across 20 different teams responsible for supporting the current mobile app. Coordinating with such a large group introduced complexities in communication, decision-making, and overall project management. Each team had unique priorities, workflows, and deadlines, making synchronization difficult and a cohesive approach hard to achieve. Additionally, varying levels of experience and expertise among teams added further complexity. Balancing individual team needs and expectations while maintaining a unified vision for the app redesign required meticulous planning, clear communication, and strong collaboration.
My Approach
Current State Analysis
This allowed us to understand the ecosystem in which all app elements relate to each other, both from the users’ standpoint (functionally, visually) and also behind the scenes (which API calls are triggered where etc.) to avoid any unintended impact on customer experience during the process and to mitigate any risks.
During this stage, we have worked on documenting the current app architecture, analyzing screen by screen to understand what exists today and how it works.
Additionally, we have established regular touch points with all key stakeholders (business, legal, compliance, marketing), and teams that either will be involved in key decisions or will be impacted by our work in any way.
Looking for opportunities
As we analyzed key user flows, we have discovered multiple areas of opportunity for the business as well as for customer experience. The researchers on my team have conducted a comprehensive top tasks analysis, evaluated app analytics, and interviewed customers across business lines. The design team have conducted competitive analysis for key user journeys. As the result we have proposed solutions that included removing unnecessary clicks, and additional features to streamline users’ access to important features.
Redesigning key elements
Following our comprehensive review, we identified several key elements that define an app's look and feel, as well as recurring elements we prioritized for development. These critical components, such as the header, navigation elements, cards, interactive elements and patterns needed validation across numerous use cases due to their significant impact and possible user change aversion.
We designed several themes, and conducted multiple rounds of user testing to validate usability and discoverability of new features, as well as preference testing to discover whether the new design ‘feels’ like the brand and evokes a sense of trust and security in users.
This work helped us establish a set of key elements that would impact the overall app aesthetics. Redesigning these elements first to ensure they align with brand, ADA, and copy design guidelines, helped us introduce the refreshed look and feel without impacting user experience.
Process and governance
After establishing the key elements and patterns we worked with teams across the organization to apply new patterns to the remaining parts of the experience throughout the entire app. I established processes required for quality control and governance:
Each updated screen would go through a copy design team review to ensure consistency in voice and tone.
We reviewed VoC data for each flow we touched to eliminate prominent user pain points.
Additionally, we identified and rectified a substantial number of technical defects.
Furthermore, we introduced a number of automations meant to streamline the delivery, including a making color token library available to engineers to ensure consistency and delivery speed.
Design system
To ensure adherence to the new UI, we engaged our design system partners as well as in-house ADA specialists to develop a unified mobile app UI Kit. The team has developed over 100 iOS and Android components and patterns, which were made available to all mobile designers.
Managing up and across
We have been engaged in delivering multiple presentations to our leadership ranging from quick status updates to design reels we produced to keep our leadership team engaged and supportive of the ongoing efforts.
Governance has remained a continuous effort throughout the project's duration. In effort to keep the project collaborative and transparent for everyone on the team, I conducted weekly calls with the entire team of product owners, engineers, and designers across various product areas, providing updates on the project progress, gathering feedback, and resolving on-going implementation issues.
Results
Updated app’s customer satisfaction increased by 48 points, bringing us to #1 in visual design among competitors (source: JD Power Survey)
Over the 4 months, we have updated over 120 screens to make improvements across main usability heuristics and made changes to look and feel.
Established a new Mobile Design UI kit that relied on the global design system enabling designers and developers to follow established guidelines and promote consistency and standards, efficiently delivering consistent experiences.
4.7 Rating on the App store. Some recent reviews say:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Much better look to the eye. Very User-friendly”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ”Citizens bank has a user-friendly app. Love it!”Removing some of the user frustration related to the outdated experience, we were able to hone in on the next biggest issue to resolve, which is the login errors and overall latency of the app.