Chase Mobile App

CHASE MOBILE APP, ADD A NEW FEATURE

LEAD UX DESIGNER UX/UI DESIGNER, 80HRS

PROJECT BRIEF

Chase, owned by J.P Morgan, has a mission to empower its customers by creating engaging, lifelong, relationships. They have put a lot of effort in the past on providing the most relevant products for their customers. For this fictional project, Chase would like to go beyond that and provide tools to help its customers manage their money better. The latest studies show a continual increase in mobile usage and Chase sees this as an opportunity to help millennials with their financial challenges. They would like to:

1) Design a personal finance management system feature that embeds within the current chase app.

2) Design additional complementary features that could enhance your main one.

PROCESS

1) Research

Secondary Research
- Market Research
- Competitive Analysis
Primary Research
- 1:1 Interviews

2) Define

User Personas
Empathy Maps
Product Feature Roadmaps

3)Information Architecture/Interaction Design

Site Map
User Flow
Lo-Fidelity Wireframes

4) U.I Design Implementation and Iteration

Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
Usability Testing
Affinity Mapping

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Since Millennials are the focus of the project I researched some of the areas they struggle with financially. I found that millennials (born between 1981-1996) where hardest hit by the great recession. Most struggle with burdening student loan debt, high inflation to wage ratio, and soaring rent prices. There is also a distrust amongst the generation with investing in the market with most preferring to save money on their own. The apps that do help save money don’t help build a significant nest egg for larger purchases. While conducting interviews, all participants mentioned they have a savings but were both inconsistent with putting money away and unsure of how to save for large financial goals.

The app would benefit from a feature that could educate users on how to plan for large financial goals such as buying a home, car, etc, set a savings goal, and automate it. It would be like a pocket financial advisor.

EMPATHIZE

To answer the question of who we are designing for and who the potential users will be, I created a user persona to culminate the research findings. This also helped serve as a guide during the design process.

The Empathy map helped to further empathize and synthesize observations from the research phase and pull out deeper insights into potential users.

From this, I realized just how busy potential users are and how difficult it can be to set time aside to research financial planning and setting savings goals. This was something that I understood through research but didn’t fully empathize with until completing the empathy map.

INTERACTION DESIGN

To get a better idea of how a potential user might navigate through the app I created a task flow. This helped me understand a logical sequence users might take to accomplish a task within the app. I was then able to create the lo-fidelity wireframes with better accuracy and confidence in the users journey through the app.

The task flow helped me move onto creating some of the lo-fidelity wireframes now that i understood logically how users might flow through tasks.

UI AND TESTING

After hashing out the basic details and elements through the lo-fidelity wireframes, I created the Brand Style Tile for the chase mobile app. I wanted to stay as close as I could to Chase’s mobile app elements so I used screen shots of the app to either duplicate or recreate some of the features. I wanted the final product to feel as real as possible for testers to fully immerse themselves during the testing experience.

Once the brand style tile was in place I was able to finally design the new savings calculator feature into the app. This was an exciting process for me as I got to visually see how all the research, analysis, and planning came together into a workable prototype. I was excited to get it into the hands of potential users and hear their feedback.

The prototype can be tested here.

Before conducting the usability test I made sure to write down specific objectives to test for. This was to ensure the test would have a focus and stay on track. The objectives are to:

Observe how the user interacts with the app and how pleasant the design is to use
Test for ease of identifying different content on site
Test for efficiency and any errors that may present themselves while completing tasks on site
Discover any areas of improvement

The methodology was in person testing through the maze platform.

Results:

5 total participants between (16-48)
94% error free rate (90% was my prediction)
Main issue was returning back to the homepage after checking on automated savings goal. There was some confusion regarding that.
All remarked that they enjoyed the feature and wish they could actually use it
All remarked that it was easy to use and enjoyed the user interface.

To further summarize the usability test findings I utilized an affinity map to organize and visualize the data in a more meaningful empathetic way. Through doing this I was able to pull out a few more actionable items to re-iterate on the app such as rewording some parts of the feature and fixing dividing/input lines. I plan to continue building out the app to completion in the future and am excited to see the final, fully finished product.