“I need my bank not only to be a safe enviroment to store my money, but to help me save my money, get the maximum out of my money and to even help me earn more money.”
Money is important. The future is important. Have you ever thought of the future of money and the opportunities there are with innovation in technology? Well I have. I believe pushing the bounds between innovation and tangible design by creating useful and valuable products to empower people to lead better lives.
Gravity is a mobile only banking concept that has experiences you won’t find in an ordinary bank. Using AI, well crafted UX and beautiful UI design. Gravity is the bank of the future.
Making the world go round
For a smoother, safer and pretty much funner banking experience, I needed to establish some core guiding principles.
Chi-ching
I carefully chose a dominantly black and white colour palette with the exception of harmonious pastels. The font was considered due to its impact across all applications while keeping it easy to read. Being a Google font makes it highly recognisable.
#FFFCF0
Silver Sand
#FDEBA4
Floral White
#FFE270
Mellow Yellow
#D1EBFD
Azureish White
#90D4FB
Pale Cyan
#45AAF2
Picton Blue
Transactions and transitions
People interact with mobile experiences differently. Knowing this, I had some real fun when creating innovative custom animations.
Sophisticated Artifical Intelligence
All screen, intuitive design
Powerful, integrated components
Optimised for iPhoneX
Ballin with the ballers
I used my learnings from research and development (we’ll get on to that later) that both served the User Interface and business goals.
Issac — the AI Assistant
Powerful integrations
Expenses tracker
Money on my mind
I set off to learn about how FinTech (mostly banking software) is challenging the banking system. Money is important, to all of us. I used my learnings to drive this work of creating a brand that both served people with fairness and clarity.
Not always ‘bout the dough
100% of users are people. Focusing on the mindset we share with each other, I created two separate user persona’s based on intuition and assumption. knowing who the people you’re designing for and what they’re about is the best way to create value.
Picture this
Building scenario's put's the user journey in context. I create multiple scenarios that apply to the person using the product circumstance outside the scope of using the product.
01.
Scenario: Wants to attend Product mangers conference and wants to check if her budget will allow for that.
02.
Scenario: Wants to know where the majority of her money goes and budget her monthly salary.
Making it rain
When I’m creating a new project or product, it’s pretty important that I understand the context of use the user will experience with the product. To help me do that, I create simple user journey maps like this.
No pain no gain
Summarising the research and user persona’s, I created multiple empathy maps and developed the following considerations:
01.
Could I create the experience so the user feels in control of thier finances?
People feel in control when they have all the data and information provide in simple and digestable format.
02.
Will people trust a mobile only bank as being safe and secure?
Continous feedback from Gravity to the user recommending suggestions on spending habits.
03.
How will the user maximise their money with powerful integrations?
Teach as well as serve. By letting the user know the power of the app, the user becomes familiar and capable of utilising it’s features.
Pounds and pennies
Sketching ideas, prototyping and testing was the perfect balance creation and reaching the objectives. Sketching helped me create a lot of different versions before reaching the final decision.
Money and the power
The solutions resulted in three different user flows. You can watch the flows/iterations and animations below.
Setting your budget
The solution I arrived for setting your budget is a pretty simple one that can be achieved in two ways. One with manual interaction by the user, the other is a command said to Issac, which he gracefully accomplishes with ease.
Useful tips
Cleverly designed AI will create segments of your transactions and give tips on which payments can be amended to save you money.
Powerful integrations
Great apps utilise the power of other apps. Why try and re-invent the wheel? Do the one thing well and harness the power of other platforms who are also the best version of themselves. Just like a sports team; that’s exactly what this flow intends play.
What I found out
Time is money — and I would have spent a lot to discover the type of data required to make an accurate execution of the user needs and experience. Most of the data collected was discovered on the web such as Monzo, WSJ, Starling Bank, Revolut and Wealth Simple.
Reading loads about people, and money really helped me understand the current state and how people feel about money, banking and finance. But this amount of qualitative data is pretty impractical without the quantitate data to compare it with. As a consequence of this, most of the rationale was based on personal experiences and opinions from publications which led to more assumptions than I'd like to use for designing experience for people.
One thing is clear to me though, that 2019 is most likely to maximise the usage of intelligent machine learning algorithms that provide optimal experiences, which is much more personalised, and the assistants more approachable.
Check out Gravity — a mobile bank concept by @louisomoody
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