The Challenge

The process of boarding on a new mobile banking app is a problem faced by many financial institutions. The challenge was to remove the common pain points and keep the process simple and user-friendly, whilst gathering all the key information needed to get the user up and running on the app.

After identifying critical issues in the early 2016 iOS version of the Cashplus app, such as:  Long forms, No progress indication, Poor input field validation, Average security measure, No option to save progress -  I undertook the challenge of improving the overall on-boarding user experience.

My overall goal was to create an on-boarding experience that was simple and easy to use for new and existing customers, saving them the time and frustration of having figure out how to use the app.

Goals for the user:

• • Improve customer on-boarding experience
• • Reduce the overall on-boarding time

Business goals

• • Increase number of signups
• • Increase customer loyalty
• • Reduce cost of customer on-boarding

I started my design process by doing some competitor research and searching the internet for high-level data and reviews about mobile banking on-boarding data. This helped me to identify and understand:

• The core users
• Their needs
• Their mental modal of an boarding process for a mobile banking app

I also spoke to some freelancers, and business banking customers to better understand their needs, goals and frustrations they have had when using a mobile banking.

From these initial interviews I discovered the core users of the app are business owners and entrepreneurs. I analysed the data and produced a simple proto persona to help better understand the core users their needs and what steps they would expect to take during a mobile banking on-boarding process.

I found the biggest pain point during the on-boarding process to be the fear over security and the time it typically takes to activate a new account.
With that in mind I decided to focus on creating an on-boarding experience that would make users feel assured that their personal details are safe whilst providing a clear simple account activation process, allowing users to signup wishing 10-15 mins.

I sketched out a user flow that met the core needs of both users.

Wireframes - Iteration, Iteration, Iteration!

I then sketched out some wireframes to ensure that the experience would be clear and easy to follow. This also gave me an opportunity to see a global view of the on boarding screens and test and refine the screens where necessary. 

I kicked of my design process by defining the core brand elements for the app. As I did not have access to the Cashplus brand guidelines, I used their website and app as a guide to allow me to understand the tone and visual language the app needed to communicate.
The key visual elements I defined included - colours, typography and iconography.

Using the brand guidelines, I then made some improvements to provide a more consistent visual language and improve the overall visual experience for the user.