Monee Banking app
A 10hr UX / UI challenge
I recently took the challenge of creating the dashboard for a mobile banking app. The client offered an extensive brief and research insights that would be extremely helpful in order to fulfill the task in such a short time.
Brief
Monee Bank is a startup with the mission of revolutionizing the traditional banking world.
Their target is youngsters between 22 and 35 years old, Millenials, that need access to banking for the first time.
Our goal is to gain their loyalty by offering them an added value with our service. Also, we would like to compete with the traditional big banks in the future.
Challenge
- To create a Dashboard for their mobile app, based on the insights gathered from their qualitative studies and the ones generated by myself.
- Finalize the exploratory part of the project by defining the Insights generated.
- Define goals in order to move forward to the creative part of the process where I would develop the corporate Image, wireframes & prototypes, based on the results of the previous studies. Being a cohesive design based on the user.
In order to do so, I'll take on the following UX methodologies.
Course of action
Taking into consideration the time and material offered I decided to take on these techniques:
Exploratory:
- Goal definition focused on the company, the user, and the competition.
- User persona, In order to define and understand our users: motivations, needs, attitudes, behavior.
- Benchmarking analyzing our competition in order to define our approach.
Generational:
- MoSCoW to generate ideas based on the most important areas of our product.
- Wireframe of the basic structure of our dashboard.
- Moodboard as an inspirational start point for our design.
- Corporate Identity.
- High fidelity design.
- Conclusions / future work
Goal definition
Here is where the goals are defined on a deeper level in order to position the Product based on our users, the company, and its competition.
User
- Empathize with its lifestyle.
- Identify its baking needs.
- Detect its current problems with banking.
- Offer a product they value in a positive way.
- Cover the needs of youngsters that need when they first open a bank account.
- Change its negative vision on the sector.
- Create trust between the user and us.
- Identify the user with their bank's image, offering design and functionalities that they understand and like.
Company
- Gain customer loyalty.
- Help their customers understand banking & saving.
- Encourage customers to manage their assets properly.
- Offer a different product.
- Carry its values.
- Communicate with understandable terms.
- Create a modern and visually appropriate product.
- Stand out from other banks.
- Build a positive and trustworthy image.
Competition
- Revolutionize the traditional baking sector.
- Detect flaws when covering customer's necessities.
- Compare strategies, practice & design.
- Differentiate from them by generating a positive impact.
- Compete with them as equals.
- Conquer their clients by doing things better.
- Improve their online banking experience.
- Create an outstanding image that differentiates us from them.
User persona
With the information given by the customer, there are clearly two types of users. One that is still a student and gets money from his parents, the other that is starting to work for the first time and needs an account to get paid. Both with little to none experience with banking, millennials with a very strong visual eye, and a extensive use of mobile phone apps. Here are defined on a deeper level.
Benchmarking
For benchmarking, I looked into the competition as well as apps that are constantly viewed by our users.
Banking
N26
The German company is a very good example of online banking. It has a very clean image and transmits being a transparent, modern, and serious bank.
Monese
Our direct competitors already use graphics that remind us of other platforms, in this case, Google and that helps us visualize the expenses in a very visual and easy way.
Bnext
This wallet account is super easy to use and simple. its visual identity stands out from others making it highly recognizable, from its card to the app. Its made for people who travel and it makes it super easy to pay or take out money anywhere in the world.
ING
A great example of modern banking that fights to break stereotypes. They have a very good visual image. What stands out most is their use of interactive graphics, colors, and icons to display information on a very intuitive, simple, and ludic way.
Visual Culture
My focus was also put on creating an app similar to the ones our user is familiar with. So I studied their patterns & style.
Fortnite video game
A very visual game with bright colors and very little use of text.
Tick Tock
The latest social media platform that is based on videos to which you can add many effects, emojis, and also interact.
Still, the most popular social media platform, based on a straight structure, a very simple environment that allows the user to add color to their content. The main navigation is a sticky menu at the bottom, it also has more hidden options, that come out on drag up, left or right.
MoSCoW
Once the research part was done I took on this creative methodology that helps us generate ideas very easily by defining our product on what Must, Could, Should, and won't have.
Creation
For the visual part, the idea was to make an impact, be very recognizable and clean at the same time modern and age-appropriate.
The Logo was intentionally very straight forward, round and bold. Creating a squared icon.
Dashboard Design
The dashboard was inspired by Interactive graphics that are already being used by some companies it is very clean, easy to read, and visual. I chose a sticky menu at the bottom that is often used in social media with the sections that are most relevant to the user: savings, wallet, dashboard, movements, and personal area.
I also developed the other main areas of the app.
Dashboard
this section shows a summary of the status of the account in a very simple and visual way.
Piggy Bank
It was clear from the insights that our users found difficult the idea of saving, so I turned in to goals, by creating different objectives to reach, our clients save with a purpose which helps them with their finance and also making it a reality.
Wallet
This is is probably the most used section, paying with our phones, sending money, asking for it…we do that on a daily basis sometimes with more than one app. I gathered all together with a list of the latest movements.
Movements
An interactive graphics area where the client can visualize expenses and income by clicking on the bar. Filtered by days, weeks, months, or years.
Personal area
All the information the user needs such as Ibam, settings, and their own info.
Conclusions & future work
It has been a very interesting challenge to create this app. Taking inspiration from modern banking and wallet banking apps.
In order to have a better affordance, the graphics are inspired by interfaces that young people use on a daily basis.
It was a very inspiring process and satisfactory being able to achieve so much in so little time.
In the future, I would like to do some testing and the iterations needed.
