Bank X was a subsidiary company of Bank of Internet (BofI). It was the first in-house online banking platform the company had created.
Bank X Web Application. Bank X was founded upon the idea of providing the best online banking experience.
For the past 20 years, BofI relied on a third-party vendor to construct and host their digital banking platform. While outsourcing initially offered financial benefits for the mid-size bank, its expansion increased demands from both the business and its customers. As a result, BofI's growth exceeded the capabilities of its existing platform, leading to significant challenges such as ineffective account and technology management and a lack of current features and online banking conveniences for customers.
Additionally, the bank viewed this project as an opportunity to consolidate multiple brands under a single online banking platform.
The Bofi software development team, including the UX team, was divided into smaller agile teams to improve feature development efficiency and time management. While the main team was based in San Diego, the majority of the development team was located offshore in Guadalajara, Mexico.
As the Senior UX Designer, I was responsible for developing the design strategy for the complex alerts and notifications section of the application. To address the issues within this complex section and create a strategy that delivers positive results, I focused on:
By defining the why, what, who, and metrics for success, I was able to identify and develop use cases, edge cases, and user flows based on insights gathered through cross-departmental and stakeholder interviews. This guided the creation of information architecture, wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and prototypes.
As part of the prelaunch process, I managed and conducted usability test sessions for the mobile app version of UDB. I created a video and a detailed usability test report (see below), which I presented to project stakeholders and the leadership team. Following this, I was asked to establish UX standards for usability testing across the company. I then trained the UX team on these standards and led additional usability test sessions for the mobile app. The insights and feedback from these sessions were instrumental in prioritizing the application roadmap, ensuring that key issues were addressed based on severity before the product launch.
To ensure flexibility and control for future growth, the project was focused on redesigning and developing an open architecture solution. This approach was essential for meeting the bank's evolving needs while introducing Agile development and UX methodologies to the company for the first time.
The solution addressed key challenges by (1) determining the technical capabilities necessary to consolidate nine brands into three, seamlessly integrating both existing and new APIs, and (2) implementing a strategic approach that adhered to the project timeline while preventing any disruption to customer service.
The Bank X web application successfully launched on schedule. Usability testing revealed that the majority of customers could complete their tasks efficiently and were satisfied with the new features introduced in the online banking platform. The platform's success provided BofI with essential insights to move forward with consolidating all brands onto a single unified online banking platform.
