Payment cards management

Q1 2020

Context

Users who had access to an account belonging to another user, referred to as “eDisponents”, could not view any payment cards on the Internet Banking platform. This was due to technical and legal limitations, as well as stakeholder beliefs based on assumptions about user preferences. However, it soon became evident that business users, in particular, demanded these options and were dissatisfied with the current functionality.

It was supposed to be a simple task that I should “just draw and hand over to engineers”. I analyzed the proposed solution and saw that some users with more than 50 cards and 50 eDisponents, would have to manage over 2500 checkboxes – a suboptimal user experience that I decided to improve on.

Why

Businesses and other high valued users were unsatisfied with the current solution and invented insecure workarounds.

How

Understand customer needs through first-line bank employees, map use cases, explore the technical possibilities, propose a solution, validate with users, and hand over to development.

My role

Drive the initiative to improve the existing solution and lead the project from the discovery phase through design until functional implementation. In this project, I've collaborated with business analysts, backend developers, and key stakeholders.

Discovery

I first analyzed the technical limitations of the payment card system, then followed by identifying users with eDisponents and payment cards based on our analytics data.

As it is difficult to arrange user tests with business clients, I found an alternative approach and instead performed 13 “user” interviews with personal bankers, who take care of them and have a great overview of the business accounts.

How

  • Technical analysis

  • Analytics research

  • “User” interviews

Findings

Through discovery, I've identified eight elementary types of users, some of which were comfortable with the current solution while others hated it.

It was crucial to find a solution that would satisfy the unsatisfied while keeping the existing happy users happy.

Design

After analyzing the different user types, the initial needs were very quickly identified and divided into these four categories:

  1. owner doesn't want the eDisponent to see any cards

  2. owner wants the eDisponent to see all cards

  3. owner wants the eDisponent to see and manage all cards

  4. owner wants the eDisponent to see and manage their card only

From the initially proposed design with over 50 checkboxes per each card, I reduced it to a simple screen with only three radio buttons while keeping the same functionality and significantly increased clarity.

I've delivered prototypes ready to be implemented while communicating with the technical, business and other stakeholders.

How

  • Sketching

  • Prototyping

  • Usability testing

What have I learned?

This was a small and quick project, but I learned to question and think through the proposed solutions, no matter the size. I spent two weeks on a task estimated by my PM for half a day, but in the end, I saved hours of tedious checkbox clicking for big and valued customers.

I also learned that even when it’s impossible to talk directly to specific users, there could be a way how to learn about their problems and needs through someone else. So, in other words, creativity comes in handy in all the design process stages.