Video Banking – Human-Centered Design Project For OpenIDEO
This Video Banking solution is in response to an OpenIDEO challenge that started in October 2016. My team's solution utilized human-centered design research and principles to propose a video live chat service for convenient and personalized banking for people aged 50 and over.
Project Overview.
My team and I participated in the OpenIDEO challenge that strove to answer the question: How might we create financial services that support the dreams and obligations of those 50 and older?
Full design challenge can be found here.
My Role: For this project, I served as Designer and Researcher. I helped interview and find relevant research to help us ideate as well as provide sketching and basic mock-ups to communicate our idea.
My Team: I worked with Angela Wang, Amanda Trock, Sameehan Patel, and Flora Richter. We were all graduate students attending NYU.
Research.
Our team conducted research on this topic. We used a variety of sources including news articles, personal experiences, and interviews. In total, my team made 24 research contributions (out of 310 total contributions from around the world).
Links to our contributions can be found in this Google Doc.
From our research, we synthesized our research to focus on points that the 50+ age group cared about. These include online security, face-to-face service, and trust.
Ideation.
Our team set out to create ideas that could meet the needs of the target audience. We came up with two ideas.
Bridging the Digital and Physical Service Experience envisioned a personal video banking system. This idea was created for tech savvy 50+ year olds who value face-to-face banking experiences and are worried about security and consistency. We ended up pursuing idea further through user testing and further iterations.
Our second idea, Interest-Driven Savings, was designed for those who are 50 and older. This concept supports their dreams and obligations by helping them to practice good saving habits while at the same time giving them the freedom to indulge in their personal interests and hobbies. We did not pursue this idea further than in the ideation post.
Paper Prototype.
Our first prototype was drawn to conceptualize what we thought would be the ideal flow through the process from the user's perspective.
This first screen would be the help page. Here, there would be three options, the video chat option is highlighted to indicate what the user has clicked.
The user would then be taken to the video chat interface, complete with chat box as well a confirmation of good audio and video as well as indication of a secure connection.
After the call has ended, the user would be taken to this screen where they could rate the service as well as view a summary of what happened during the video call.
After numerous user tests and suggestions from the class and OpenIDEO team, we made revisions on the flow to address some usability concerns before constructing the interactive prototype.
Interactive Prototype.
Our interactive prototype built on the ideas in the prototype with some revised layouts based off of feedback.
On the initial help screen, we made the buttons bigger and included where the user's main branch is located.
Many people that we interviewed or tested the idea with indicated that sometimes they won't want to turn the camera on for privacy reasons or other reasons. Therefore, this screen was included to ensure those that want to be seen could turn on their video.
Since people in this age range wanted to connect with bank tellers and financial advisers that they personally knew, we would connect them with people from their main branch. With emphasis on security and working equipment, we created this screen to basically let the user know there was an authentication process to ensure that their connection was secured.
The call screen had elements moved around. A larger chat box was implemented, call duration timer added, authentication checkmarks moved, and a video box to see yourself was also added.
The ending screen was revised to immediately show the summary of what was done during this call, with "More Options" added that afforded additional interactions based on what the user wanted.
User Testing & Feedback
Based on user testing, we were able to collect the following feedback:
Here are a few key takeaways from our user testing:
Users liked that they were talking to a real person from their own bank, someone that they could see.
When the user does the video call, they feel like the experience is more personalized and that they are more valued. They also feel more secure talking about their accounts from their own home (instead of in public, or on their mobile phones).
One user said he would probably not use this service because he passes by his bank branch every day on the way to work, so he'd rather just go in and talk to someone in person.
Users liked getting a summary of what they had done during the conversation.
Presentation to OpenIDEO.
Our team presented the idea to OpenIDEO members. The idea was very well-received by the two OpenIDEO members that attended via a Skype call.
However, our idea did not make the idea cut moving forward through the OpenIDEO challenge.
