Secure mobile banking
Case Study
My role
As the sole UX designer, I was entrusted with providing input and support for the workload of two mobile engineering squads. Within the product team, my responsibilities extended to crafting the UX/UI for both the iOS and Android platforms.
Both platform designs were tackled simultaneously through a sprint-planned methodology.
About Backbase
Backbase is the world's largest engagement banking platform, enabling banks to provide the very best digital experience for their customers.
The goal
To enable banks the ability to offer their customers seamless account access through the registration of a trusted device.
The challenge
How can we encourage and ensure that bank users secure their device-based account access using existing biometric technologies?
What would success look like?
Assumptions
By sharing and collecting our assumptions about why users weren't currently utilising biometric authentication methods, we could then determine the research activities needed to validate these assumptions.
Research activities
With our assumptions gathered, along with a user researcher, I devised the following discovery testing plan.
Over a two-week period, we conducted ten user interviews, each lasting 60+ minutes. In each session, we initiated a dialogue with the users, exploring their online security experiences before prompting them to provide word associations related to specific mobile security methods.
Key insights
Following a thorough synthesis, we identified a set of key insights that would inform and guide the next steps of our design-thinking process.
Personas
A set of personas were also created to effectively convey and contextualise the key insights to the engineering squads.
Design planning
Given that the technical solution had to be led by security policies, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of how it would address the problem and determine how the UI could meet some of the user needs identified in our research.
UI planning
On top of this technical detail, I then applied a potential UI layer.
Low-fidelity explorations
By adopting a low-fidelity mindset, I gained a better understanding of how these 'informative elements' could integrate with the typical authentication prompts. My goal was to identify commonalities and explore their application across all necessary UI elements to ensure consistency and visual balance.
Prototyping
Once we agreed on the low-fidelity designs, I began working on a prototype to see how well these designs translated to a more realistic experience. By leveraging the existing design system, the goal was to build and test this prototype within a few working days.
Testing goals
Our goal was to create trust and empower the user throughout the experience, with the hypothesis that we could achieve this through effective UI messaging. Through testing, we aimed to understand the impact and value these UI additions brought to users.
Usability studies
By conducting a quick set of unmoderated usability tests using Userlytics, we were able to gather valuable insights and identify key usability issues before delivering the design for development.
Results
In terms of functionality and usability, the prototype performed well during testing. Of particular significance was the positive user response to the 'reassurances' that were delivered through thoughtfully crafted 'guidance text' - this aspect stood out as a highlight during testing.
Another crucial insight gathered from testing was users' preference for system dialog modals in instances of usability or technical issues.
When it came to the scenario of enabling biometrics on a device system level, users favoured the custom UI approach - as it provided consistency with the experience’s overall tone.
Delivering designs
Removing the visual brand elements/assets from the Figma production files enabled me to effectively convey the distinct component usage and interaction differences between iOS and Android. This not only facilitated clear communication but also ensured that the build met the highest quality standards.
The detailed annotations within my design process served to provide clear support and answers to any questions developers had regarding the 'acceptance criteria’.
In order to guarantee that the build output aligned with the designs and achieved the desired level of quality, I built in regular review sessions with the engineers and assisted in scoping testing scenarios with QAs.
Final outcome
The deliverable effectively achieved its goal of offering an opinionated, productised view out-of-the-box.
As of now, there are no 'custom-builds' serving as alternatives to the finalised product. This allows the customer success teams to readily adopt the product, significantly shortening their project development time.
Considering the significance of this product/journey as a core proposition for most banks, our value within R&D was solidified through this design process.
Business impact
The deliverable effectively achieved its goal of offering an opinionated, productised view out-of-the-box.
As of now, there are no 'custom-builds' serving as alternatives to the finalised product. This allows the customer success teams to readily adopt the product, significantly shortening their project development time.
Considering the significance of this product/journey as a core proposition for most banks, our value within R&D was solidified through this design process.
