Find a unique product idea that will allow R-Bank to join and take a strong position in the private banking markets. Turn the idea into the product.
To define the idea and build the product, we have organized the team, consisted of a project manager and three designers. Each of the UX designers was responsible for the user experience of one of the platforms: IOS or Android. Our UI designer has supported us with graphic assets and animation. My focus was on researching and defining product ideas, strategy, structure, navigation, and visual consistency.
— Business goals, time and budget limits;
— Major audience (m/f, 25-45, actively working);
— The relationship between our audience and their money (25 user interviews);
— The market of client-facing banks and their applications in Russia;
— The main priorities of our audience (230 survey responses).
According to the collected data, a significant number of money transfers were taking place between family members, close friends, or colleagues. It led us to the idea of a family bank for people who are willing to operate their family budget through one bank and application. After R-Bank Stakeholders approved the idea, we started new research to understand how our audience operates their money inside the family. Especially we were interested in how people give money to their children and how the children use it.
— Basic and additional functionality for the first release;
— Structure and navigation through releases;
— List of separate user flows based on users' top tasks analysis like registration, identification, card operations, contacts operations, transactions, e.t.c.
To overcome the tedious registration process, we have created a story-line to engage the user from the first clicks. Personalization helped start a dialog and brought the feeling of care and comfort by turning the application into the serving buddy.
The application's complexity was dramatically increased with the possibility of creating and using virtual cards, R-Bank cards, and adding third-party bank cards. Therefore we have split big processes into separate micro-flows and have covered it with mockups and prototypes.
The applications for a parent and for a child were planned to have different functionality, structure, and copywriting. Therefore we have designed them separately. One of the challenges was to build the collaboration process between the applications and the users, keeping in mind that 'money request' was our main feature.
The process passed several testing sessions until we have got satisfying results. To make it faster, we asked our colleagues from other projects to bring their kids to the office.
Additional functionality for the second release has included creating and sharing goals and creating the tasks with reward or penalty (only from a parent to a child).
Working with external developers has forced us to create an extremely detailed guideline for each platform and each user flow. It has saved us a lot of time in the future and helped to pass QA smoothly.
This part was planned and designed separately. We went through each micro-flow to turn the user experience from dry and functional to responsive and collaborative.
The first version of the prototype has included all journeys for parent and child for the first release. At the first testing sessions, we have discovered the broken journey of the identification process. Together with bank management, we have to rebuild the identification process before the second testing session completely. The new version lets to use the application before the identification.
— The version of the app for unidentified and identified users;
— The version of the app for parent and child accounts;
— The applications for IOS and Android platforms, fully uploaded in Apple and Google stores;
— First and second releases are fully designed and documented.
As we have expected after the first launch, the unique idea has got certain attention. The marketing campaign, which started before the launch, has prepared the audience and increased its interest. Both IOS and Android application did not disappoint the users. The idea and user experience got only positive feedback. It has increased the amount of R-Bank clients and brought significant growth of bank popularity and brand recognition. Together with the second release, R-bank has joined the top 10 Russian Private Banking List.
