George UX Conference — Shaping Finance by Design
- nurgulaksoynl
- Dec 25, 2023
- 8 min read
I attended the 2nd George UX conference in Vienna on October 19, 2023. In this post, I aim to share my notes from the event because I found it truly inspiring, and I hope to spread that inspiration to others.
During the conference, I listened to 11 design talks and 1 panel discussion. I had a chance to listen to design experts from traditional banks, neo-banks, and fintech companies. There were speakers from Revolut, Middle East Banking, CaixaBank, Bitpanda, Rabobank, Illo TV, WISE, Monzo, Google Cloud, Deutsche Bank, and George.
Welcome session by Maurizio Poletto (Chief Platform Officer) from Erste Group
In his opening speech, Maurizio talked about their design journey at Erste and referenced Simple, an innovative neo-bank that served as a source of inspiration. He emphasized that Simple’s approach wasn’t just building, but rather a meticulous and deliberate design process.
Additionally, he pointed out that the next phase in their design efforts doesn’t focus on creating new applications or features. Instead, the focus will shift towards designing connections and experiences, such as developing an AI solution that offers a more human-like interaction.
How Revolut Designs Simple Digital Products for the World by Maria Herrera (Head of Product Design) from Revolut
(Revolut is a financial SuperApp, they have 35+ million personal users and 500k+ business users. They support 150+ countries and regions)
Maria presented the essential elements of their survival toolkit for the redesign journey, which encompass:
Friends, warriors, and wizards: Assemble a strong and united team with a focus on better communication and team bonding, as these elements are crucial for tackling challenges together effectively.
Have a clear mission: Understand the “why” behind your actions, aligning user needs with business objectives.
Have a map to every corner: Familiarize yourself with every aspect of your application, gaining deep insight into its various components.
Use a time machine: Study your application’s history, not just your competitors, and aim to return to its original simplicity.
Apply a little bit of magic: Don’t hesitate to think outside the box and grant yourself and your team creative freedom.
Add a user compass: Involve users in the process to ensure their input guides your decisions.
Bring pen and paper: The list and the journey continue.
Ubuntu Design Framework by Batsirai Madzonda (Design Advocate) from Middle East Banking
Batsirai’s upbringing was immersed in an environment of interconnectedness, where he witnessed the strength of communities. In his presentation, he explored the idea of transforming the way we create products by drawing inspiration from how we cultivate communities.
He said this one-hour session enables the team to reach a consensus on project requirements and primary goals.
What’s particularly advantageous about his framework is that it features “nodes,” and you can selectively choose these based on the specific requirements of a given project. This flexibility ensures that you never adhere to the same design process every time.
Insights Center, Rocking the Financial UX through Research by Natalia Heredia Lopez (UX Research Lead), and Marc Caparros (Design & UX Director) from CaixaBank
(CaixaBank is a Spanish multinational financial services company. CaixaBank has 5,397 branches to serve its 15.8 million customers, and has the most extensive branch network in the Spanish market.)
They shared insights into how the UX research team at Insight Center has fostered a customer-centric culture within the organization and successfully transitioned from tactical to strategic research.
CaixaBank’s insight center appears to be an exceptional environment for designers and researchers. The facilities include mockups of ATMs, living rooms, workshop spaces, and observation rooms.
AI vs Humans: Who Design Better? by Elif Alp-Marent (Senior Content Designer) and Julian Moser (Product Design Lead) from Bitpanda
They presented practical instances of how they incorporate AI into their design work at Bitpanda. (According to McKinsey Global Institute analysis, 30% of hours worked could be automated by 2030. But very few jobs consist of activities that can be fully automated.)
They underscored the following key points:
Designers solve problems for people.
Any generative AI tool generates something sensible and plausible. Unless prompted to do something else.
The intersection of these two objectives may involve: “solving problems for people with computers that can think.”
They also discussed three use cases for implementing AI in their design work:
Jump Start: AI boosts familiar patterns. Using AI to create designs based on industry standards is effective. It blends well-established patterns and common user needs, speeding up the design process using familiar elements.
2. Variants: The solution and tools are not crucial. Understanding people’s needs helps generate AI copy variants that solve the right problem. (Frontitude — UX writing Assistant, Figma Plug-in)
3. Consolidate: Creating affinity diagrams based on interview notes. (QoQo.ai, Figma Plug-in)
By the end they raised a good concern: “Does AI understand the context of our users?”. AI can be good when you throw in good and complete data but feeding it with lazy or not good enough data will give you no quality results.
Here are their suggestions:
It’s important to grasp the model and its limitations, including the possibility of bias.
We should cultivate relationships with these tools.
Designers have the power to shape how AI will impact the world.
The Lies We Tell Ourselves about Design Systems by Stephen Hay (Creative Director) from Rabobank
During his presentation, Stephen conveyed that design systems consist of numerous small design choices that influence subsequent design decisions. Therefore, the fundamental purpose of design systems is to assist designers in making more informed choices.
Stephen presented a list of seven lies we tell ourselves about design systems.
Documentation is optional: It’s not only about individual components but how these components interact as a whole. Education plays a significant role in this. Effective documentation and the practice of holding design critique sessions are key elements in a successful design system.
Design systems should strive to be complete: We should simplify our design system. He suggested reading the book “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand.
Atomic design is a linear process: It’s a way of thinking. Atoms represent the fundamental building blocks of your brand.
Design systems should predict the future: Designers can employ predefined tokens and customize them as needed for specific situations.
Having choice replaces though: The focus should be on helping people make informed and sound decisions.
Design systems are as important as we make them out to be
Aesthetics are a part of function, and form the purpose of the system. The system itself contains agreements about aesthetics but is secondary to them.
“Design is not making beauty: beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.” — Louis Khan
Illustration System: Digital Emotion Management by Ilenia Notarangelo (Creative Director) and Ani Karamanukyan (Operations Director) from Illo.Tv
Ilenia and Ani demonstrated how custom illustrations can be harnessed to enable brands to convey their stories effectively.
They emphasized that the user experience goes beyond mere functionality. Humans feel emotions and experience a lot of emotions in connection with money, like happiness, anxiety, satisfaction, fear, frustration, stress, envy, and excitement. Their clients usually require the following five elements; stand out, bring clarity, provide direction, promote perseverance, and reposition themselves.
Functional aspects allow users to navigate and achieve their goals effectively. Examples:
Easy Navigation/Clear patterns
Immediate Confirmation
Visual Feedback
Clear Error Messages
Fast Loading/Loading Management
Color Coding
Emotional aspects lead to greater brand connection, memorability, and satisfaction. Examples:
Imagery
Microinteractions
Personalization
Storytelling
Feedback and Acknowledgment
Surprises and Rewards
They presented 3 case studies:
Flowe: Flowe is the fintech app developed by Mediolanum Bank for the Generation Z audience, providing a guide for first bank accounts and useful tips on saving. Mixing an eco-friendly approach with gaming visuals that reflected the brand’s identity we created an entire system of illustrations, adding animations as well. They focused on a color palette that reflected the bank’s green approach, blending natural elements with dark colors and hints of glow and contrasting colors.
N26: The key takeaway is that cryptocurrency can be integrated into one’s financial lifestyle and is not a fraudulent or deceptive scheme, despite its intangible nature.
Strava, Illustrations & Badges: They designed 20 badge illustrations for the global fitness app. They aimed for an iconic, cheerful look and, after the initial round of explorations, they opted together for a character-based approach, with a dynamic, quirky side. Enter an entire range of inclusive, genderless, and super-dynamic characters to accompany Strava users across various sports activities, levels, and tiers. As the challenge badges are static within the UI, they played with exaggerated proportions, super perspectives, and emphasized tilts to add movement to the static images.
From Stale to Stand Out. How We Transformed Wise’s Design System by Cameron Worboys (Design Director) from WISE
Wise, formerly known as Transferwise, used to have a visual identity that closely resembled other banking and fintech apps, including a common blue color scheme. Their communication style and illustrations were also generic and indistinguishable. This represented a significant missed opportunity. Cameron shared the narrative of their significant rebranding process.
Initially, TransferWise primarily focused on money transfers, but as more customers began using it as an account, they faced the challenge of making a significant shift. They initially attempted to address this by making individual changes in different regions. However, this approach proved ineffective. Instead of multiple iterative steps, they opted for a single bigger leap.
He also emphasized that having a well-established design system was the only way to successfully execute this large-scale redesign.
In conclusion, he emphasized that if your project isn’t gaining momentum, there are two potential explanations; you might be focusing on the wrong priorities or your project might not be communicated effectively, which underscores the importance of having a compelling narrative.
How We Keep Users Central to Monzo as We Grow by Layla Didarzaded (User Researcher), and Saskia Liebenberg (Research Ops Lead) from Monzo
In their presentation, they explained how do they maintain the customer centricity that Monzo was founded on, as they scale and grow.
They wanted to convey three key lessons:
Self-serve research doesn’t save you time (at first): They provided templates and instructional guides, along with offering office hours for assistance. However, they discovered the need to customize the guidance to match the experience, capabilities, and preferences of the individuals involved.
More research isn’t always the answer: It’s important to maximize the utility of existing resources and establish an easily accessible research database. They’ve implemented practical approaches, like maintaining a specialized Slack channel for research summaries. Additionally, they recommend dedicating more time to the dissemination of research findings and gaining a deep understanding of the conclusions.
Not all customer contact is research (nor does it need to be): To improve customer conversations, they developed a question bank as a means to facilitate meaningful interactions.
How Google Uses its Conversational Interfaces: Call Companion UI Demo by Riccardo Carlesso (Developer Advocate) from Google Cloud
Riccardo’s presentation focused on reimagining customer service with GenAI and multi-modal interaction. We’ve all encountered frustrating customer service experiences. In many cases, instead of resolving the issue, the problem actually worsens during the interaction. He shared possible problems; poor communication, poor robot intelligence, and state doesn’t persist.
Riccardo presented a brief overview of how does user prefers to communicate information:
He emphasized 3 things in his demos:
The app sends a URL for Call Companion conversation
CC transcribes the whole conversation: you can now choose between speaking, trying, or using apps (upload PC, share position,…): You have gone Mutli-modal!
Finally, Gen AI created a summary.
At the end of the presentation, he highlighted that AI can help you create an assistant or full-fledged standalone chatbot. Context is key. Gen AI (better conversation) and Multi-modal (more choice) can help enrich User Experience.
Enhancing UX Maturity in Designing Financial Services for the Masses by Niels D. Siebenborn (Senior UX Designer) from Deutsche Bank
Niels’s talk emphasized the power of user experience in driving Deutsche Bank’s digital transformation. Niels emphasized the research aspects of an extensive IT migration project in Europe, one of the largest, involving 18 million customers and 50 billion data sets. This project aimed to consolidate the IT systems of Deutsche Bank and Postbank.
Challenges of this project:
Niels provided the following advice;
Create assessments
Provoke empathy
Raise quantitative data
A Tale of Piggy Banks & Pixels: How to Build a Banking Experience for Children and Their Parents by Sebastian Schreibmaier (Product Designer) and Zsolt Aranyosi (Product Owner) from George
At the beginning of their presentation, they emphasized that people tend to stick with their first bank account throughout their lives, with only a small percentage (10%) making changes. Additionally, the average age for opening an account is 12. According to these two insights, they highlighted that attracting customers at a young age is vital, and the initial experience with the bank should be exceptional.
They emphasized that designing a digital baking experience for families is more than just a matter of simplification or making some elements bigger. We must consider the needs of the parents and put ourselves in the children’s shoes to make baking as easy, fun, and helpful as possible for the little ones. In order to achieve that they shared three important points; integration, safety&control and education.
They shared some examples from their design:
They made a change in how the card is temporarily locked. Instead of a toggle switch, they opted for a bottom sheet, and they also included a badge that displays the card’s status.
Parents establish the card limits, and the child cannot modify them. To represent this, they chose to employ a progress bar pattern.
Kids love animations.
They summarized the important takeaways for designing for kids:
I appreciate the inspiration and positive energy at George UX Conf hosted by George Labs. 🤗
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