Objective
Providing the customer with the ability to save money into a fund or a savings pot within an automated process.
Research Methods
Research Methods
Customer interviews, competitor audit, persona study & prototype testing.
The Team
Product Owner, Project Manager, UX Designer and 2 Developers
How I helped
Some of my favourite projects are when I am solving complex design problems that will benefit peoples lives, so during this project I worked very closely with the in-house UX designer at Sapient to create a useful & highly functional savings goal product within the Natwest banking app with the end goal of supporting people.
The success of this product further tailgated similar products to enter the market.
The success of this product further tailgated similar products to enter the market.
The Hypothesis
The hypothesis process for savings goals began with a thorough understanding of our target customers and their financial behaviour. We hypothesised that by creating a user-friendly product that allows users to automatically save money from their bank account into a fund or savings pot, we can positively influence their saving habits and help them achieve their financial goals. In a world where finances are getting harder and spending can easily get out of control, we knew this product would set a new standard for online banking.
Research & Ideation
After generating a list of potential saving methods, we carefully analysed each one to identify the best methods that could be adapted into a digital form for our savings goals product. We evaluated factors such as ease of use, effectiveness in encouraging savings behaviour, and how it can work within a digital platform. We also considered the preferences and behaviours of our target users.
After multiple ideas we then selected the most promising approaches. These methods were chosen based on their potential to effectively engage users, encourage consistent savings behaviour, and provide a seamless user experience with the existing banking service. This careful selection process ensured that our app's saving features are relevant, user-friendly, and aligned with our original hypothesis.
Working with Natwest's strict guidelines for accessibility and usability, I then began drafting out our ideas. I knew from the start that we would need to create new components, but I tried to keep this to a minimum to stay consistent with recognisable design and also to ease the eventual development for engineers during production.
User Testing
After our research and ideation phase we ended up with around 4-5 unique ways of money saving. We then started performing some small moderated testing with existing customers to gather further data to help us refine our ideas.
Project Handoff & Conclusion
Project Handoff & Conclusion
Working collaboratively throughout and by constantly liaising with the product owner from the bank, we eventually drilled our ideas down to budget, spending and goals which we eventually pushed into pre-production UI and performed some final quantitate unmoderated as well as again small qualitative testing to validate our hypothesis and work.
Savings goals is now a thriving product of the Natwest banking app.
Savings goals is now a thriving product of the Natwest banking app.
The challenges I overcame
Savings goal was a very tricky but highly rewarding piece. At the very early stages during user research we faced a lot of fallbacks trying to successfully translate how we could keep the customer engaged with the product whilst the actual savings processes were always happening in the background. This is a time when all of this was very new and banking services were very mundane with no gamification. It was an excellent learning curve for the team as these types of products eventually became a staple of financial services.
Another challenge we faced was that we were limited with time and resources, thus had to resort to using existing design system components as much as we can. We kept thinking outside the box and re-iterating our solutions to work as best as possible with what we already have at the bank, in the end we only ended up resorting to creating a very small amount of additions to the design system. This in turn helped immensely with handover to engineering and the release of the build.
Another challenge we faced was that we were limited with time and resources, thus had to resort to using existing design system components as much as we can. We kept thinking outside the box and re-iterating our solutions to work as best as possible with what we already have at the bank, in the end we only ended up resorting to creating a very small amount of additions to the design system. This in turn helped immensely with handover to engineering and the release of the build.
✓ Now half a million customers using Savings Goal
✓ Increased customer engagement with other Natwest features
✓ Improving the financial stability of customers
✓ Increased customer engagement with other Natwest features
✓ Improving the financial stability of customers