KGIS-mockup mobile
Top Investment Bank in Taiwan

How I Transformed a Traditional Financial App into an Engaging Experience  and Increase 10% in Activation.

UX Designer& UX Consultant

2023.09-2023.11
Project Background

My client, one of Taiwan's top investment banks, set out to revolutionize how young people perceive finance. To achieve this, they partnered with a leading telecom company, aiming to weave their innovative digital solutions into the telecom's popular e-commerce platform. This strategic move wasn't just about boosting sales—it was about making finance exciting and accessible for the next generation. By merging financial expertise with cutting-edge technology, they crafted a solution that not only drove purchases but also inspired new investors to take their first steps into the financial world.

Stakeholders are not happy with the current solution. Few comments are as below:
  • Traditional design in the overall flow and landing page.
  • High dropout during the account opening.
  • Low user engagement and retention after the creation.

What's I did as a UX Consultant in this Project

  • Stakeholder Management
    I am the communication bridge between their internal design team and stakeholders to help them align the ideas . I also need to present the work progress and UX strategy for the stakeholders to ensure it's align with the business goal.
  • Workshop Facilitator
    Conduct workshop such as brainstorming, stakeholder workshop and strategy design.

  • UX Design
    Design app wireframes and prototype
  • Usability Test
    Design usability test scripts and conduct usability test to present the design works to match with the proposal.
Challenge-

Design Disconnected with Business

The first version which was made by the clients' design team already passed their required usability test in Systematic Usability Test, which proved the reduce of activation was not resulted by usability. However, the stakeholders were still unhappy with the result because they think it fall into boring and traditional design of the financial app, which doesn't attract their target users.
After I received their proposal and previous design, there are few key requirements they hope to meet:  

User Research

I reviewed the result from the previous usability test, which is conducted by 10 users from the target group. The major churn rate happened in RSP Setup and Fulfillment Process. The mood shift and the amount of pain points are addressed in the user journey map as below:  

user journey map
I don't have any finance experience, so I freaked out when I saw all the numbers in the RSP page. I don't know what to do, so I just close the APP.
---Amanda (one of the users from usability test), 31 years old

Brainstorming Workshop

After reviewing some previous MVP usability data and research, in order to streamline our stakeholders and design team's opinions, I conducted a brainstorming workshop for them to have an open communication about their ideas of the app and understand their points of view about the product they want to build.

After the workshop, we conclude few must have features of the app and it will the goal for the design to achieve:
Simple Messages

Simplified the messages and process about the financial process or regulations, especially during the account opening process. On the other hand, the user-centric languages should be used to communication about the fund information.

Gamification

We would like to use some sense of gamification elements, such as colorful dashboard, interactive steppers, etc to increase the user engagement with the solution  

Emotion Continuity

Since this is an embedded app solution and we noticed the churn rate increased when user notice the solution is about investment, We would like to continue their emotion from the main app to reduce the drop.

Simple and Motivational User Experience is Our Key

After all the research and workshop , we listed down all the internal constraints and goal with each team. I noticed the major drop is caused by the difficulties of financial jargons and information which are appear in the RSP Page and Fulfillment. I decide to use gamification in the design to increase the engagement and I keep our team design focus in simple and motivational solution.  

Solution-

Gamified and transformed the traditional concept of investment

"Buy now, save later," is an embedded app that target net investor. It utilizes gamification with vivid animal characters to increase users engagement and a sense of belongings in their investment journey.  Making investing easy-peasy, even if you're a total newbie to the money game.

mockup-half

User Flow

To minimize drop-offs during the mandatory KYC process, which is required by local financial regulations, I propose changing the user flow from RSP to Account Opening. This new flow starts with users setting their investment goals, keeping them engaged from the beginning. Next, they learn about mutual funds and select their desired products, making them feel informed and confident. After this, they enter their account information and submit for the KYC process. Since the KYC takes 2 days, users can stay engaged with additional content during this time. This approach maintains user engagement and provides the bank with valuable marketing insights based on the users' early RSP selections, and it also reduces the likelihood of drop-offs during the KYC stage.
( Revised User Flow)

Key UI Screens & Features

Interactive Landing Page Boosts User Engagement

To enhance the functionality of our landing page, I proposed to add some popular products from the main app so that users can have streamlined experience and increase the engagement of the app.  

Simplified Fund Selection with Visual Aid and Risk Assessment Focus

I proposed to provide tags with their familiar language and some visual information to help our users understand the mutual fund performance and highlighted some key information to help them decide the products.

Interactive Goal Dashboard to Empower Users for Enhanced Engagement

I proposed to differentiate the achievement color to increase more engagement and gamify the experience. I also changed the information hierarchy in terms of the layout to make users have an all-in- one view for the information.

Disclaimer: The above characters and icons are designed and created by our visual designers

Usability Test

Client's first version only has Systematic Usability Scale(SUS). In order to understand the overall user experience, which include their satisfaction toward the service and aesthetic motivation of the product, we decided to include After-Scenario Questions (ASQ) and Standardize User Experience Percentile Rank Questionnaire (SUPR-Q).

Satisfaction Metrics - Task level satisfaction
  • ASQ: After-Scenario Questionnaire
  • SEQ: Single Ease Question – KGIS acceptance criteria
Performance Metric - Test level satisfaction
  • System Usability Scale – KGIS acceptance criteria
  • SUPR-Q (usable, credible, and visually appealing.) : In this case, we will only focus the visual appealing + Net Prompter Score
  • Success Rate from completion of the tasks (12/15) – KGIS acceptance criteria
The test is conducted by 15 users and we used the same users criteria as their previous version to ensure the accuracy of the test. I wrote down the key summary as below:
working
What worked?
  • Clear button to identify main task
  • Service concept is explained at the beginning
  • Easy and understandable redeem process
  • Tags and filter help users to choose mutual fund
not working
What did not work?
  • Users is still confused with the purpose of ledger account and manual transfer process
  • Users are not sure about some basic information entry after they already filled in the goal draft process
recommend-icon
Recommendation
  • Make both account opening and RSP within 1 flow rather than separate them for the verification purpose.
  • More clear and simple ledger account concept to be explained
  • Further details of the Mutual Fund is required.

Retrospect

If I am able to do another iteration for the project, I think I need to add more tutorial about the RSP since a lot of users still not really sure if this is type of investment will be helpful for their financial plan. However, we have to submit the design according to the negotiated timeline from the proposal. There are some political issues happened during this project and I learned that sometimes designer need to be assertive and rather than defensive in justifying the design, especially when dealing with stakeholders with high seniority. Clients mentioned the current design will be launched as revision depends on their first launch result. Hopefully to see the product launched in the upcoming future.

Click to see my next project