Building Seniors Confidence with Mobile Banking — A UX Case Study
Your Friend, Your Guide, Your BMO, Ready to help.
Project Overview
Goal: Provide seniors with a tool that allows for guided help that will create a friendly environment to gain seniors trust and confidence
Impact: I created a feature on the BMO mobile banking application called “Your BMO”. Users can call on their personal buddy to assist with their banking needs by the call of “Hey BMO”.
Role: UX Designer — worked in collaboration with 3 other UX Designers
Timeline: 3-week digital mobile solution
Methods: Secondary research, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, User Persona, User Journey Maps, User Flow, Sketching, and Wireframing.
The Problem
BMO — The Bank of Montreal is a Canadian multinational investment bank and financial services company. The bank provides online and mobile banking products for its customers.
The pandemic has increased the need for online banking to be the safe alternative to banking in person. This poses a challenge for some seniors who are not tech-savvy, online banking platforms come off intimidating to use because of security concerns and complex systems.
Our partners at BMO want to know how to accommodate seniors when it comes to mobile banking.
The Solution
Our team created a design objective — How might we create a digital experience that makes seniors feel confident that they can easily do banking on their phones safely?
Our goals included:
- Provide seniors with a tool that allows for guided help that will create a friendly environment to gain seniors trust and confidence
- provide detailed wireframes at the time of handoff to allow the partners to continue developing.
The Process
Secondary Research
Before we conducted primary research, we wanted background knowledge of how seniors currently feel about online and mobile banking. I conducted research online to uncover the main problems seniors face when it comes to banking online or using a mobile application.
User Interview
To follow up on secondary research we interviewed a senior who we believed fit the BMO customer demographic for seniors.
The participant demonstrated the adoption of online banking. They had the preference to use their desktop computer to access their bank account and complete banking tasks. The participant believed that mobile banking is convenient, but risker and needs to ensure the device is secure. The participant also expressed their dislike for complex processes that financial institutions typically implement.
Key Findings
We are living in a day and age, where more than ever before seniors are eager for digital banking, however, there are some challenges that arise for this demographic.
Challenges:
- Don’t know where to start — new mobile customers don’t know where to start to learn
2. Lack of Confidence — Customers need to feel secure that if they mess up they can easily get help
3. Steep Learning curve — customers need to feel like any task they to do are easy to learn
4. Distrust mobile — customers need to feel that their personal information and money is safe — particularly on mobile banking
5. Lack of encouragement — customers need to know that there are gaining new digital skills that will allow them to do more complex tasks.
design objective — How might we create a digital experience that makes seniors feel confident that they can easily do banking on their phones safely?
Ideation
User Persona & Journey Map
Our primary persona —Rose, is based on secondary research and the user interview. We chose to form a persona as a way for us to involve ourselves in her experiences as we set out to design for her.
After synthesizing our interview findings, our team was able to form a customer journey map for Rose to track a one-path journey on her mobile banking experience with BMO.
Going back to our design objective — How might we create a digital experience that makes seniors feel confident that they can easily do banking on their phones safely?
We began this process intending to find a better solution for seniors who experience difficulty using mobile banking. In hopes that it would provide users with a transparent experience that would give them a sense of confidence and security. We investigated the problem and got meaningful insights; we analyzed and synthesized the qualitative data. Now it’s time to begin concept sketching…
Concept Sketches
My team had two design ideas:
- Exit route/ SOS customer support
- Good onboarding experience for seniors.
Based on those two ideas we individually sketched out our interpretation of them.
The concept that I sketched was chosen by the team to move forward with for the design process.
User Flow
Now that we understand Rose’s desires we can turn them into the primary user flow. A teammate and I drew up a task flow that would guide a more concrete idea of how Your BMO would work. The task breakdown shows two tasks that rose might want to conduct when she does her mobile banking:
- Check monthly bank statements
- Deposit a Cheque
Wireframing
I sketched out the majority of the wireframes and with the help of a teammate, we made changes after further ideation. The importance of the sketches was to start actualizing the process of what the prototype may look like when added to the BMO mobile application.
Conclusion
Based on our research, we proposed design solutions that we believe will improve the overall user experience for seniors who mobile bank with BMO. Our goal was to provide seniors with a tool that allows for guided help that will create a friendly environment to gain seniors' trust and confidence. We believe our design propositions addressed those concerns.
Next steps:
The objective moving forward is to continue to gain approval from stakeholders at BMO and produce a high-fidelity prototype for usability testing. The functionality, usability and accessibility of the app should continue to be monitored and improved upon even in future iterations.
What I learned:
- Secondary research is just as important as primary research. Secondary data provides support for data found previously while furthering research through added questions and perspectives. Secondary research in support of primary research adds a layer of creditability and trust which is important when discussing findings with stakeholders.
If you enjoyed my story, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m open to new opportunities in the design world. I can also talk about plants and TV shows all day so feel free to chat.
