CommBank App
Areas of opportunity
Customer problems
Business opportunities
Scalability: We wanted to ensure that we met the needs of our customers by creating an easy and sensible way to continue to add new features into the app
Accessibility and inclusivity: To be a truly inclusive bank, required us to make sure all experiences were accessible.
Empowerment: The future is not one size fits all so we wanted to empower our customers to create an experience that suited to them (Customisation)
Challenge assumptions
We challenged assumptions, redefined problems and created innovative solutions through design thinking.
Some of the questions we asked ourselves were:
Wireframe & prototype
Design Process: After initial sketches, and working with stakeholders and developers we developed low-fidelity wireframes and clickable prototypes to refine our ideas.
Scope: Due to project limitations (no app rebuild), we focused on adding dashboard cards as an extension of existing features within the CommBank App.
Dashboard Cards:Enabled users to act immediately on the displayed information. Highlighted digital capabilities by making them more visible and accessible. Allowed users to customize their experience.
Customer Testing: Overall, the feature was seen as a significant improvement by existing users. New customers found the functionality intuitive and easy to use.
Visual design
Assess how the current app aligns to our goals; accessibility, scalability, discoverability, empowerment.
Competitor and market analysis
Brainstorm and explore a range of visual concepts
Quantitative and qualitative research
Iterate and refined based on key research learnings
Build staff pilot and release
Iterate on pilot feedback and release.
Areas of opportunity
Business problems with old design
On review of the old app, there was a large dependency on the old background image which was creating a lot of accessibility concerns. Also the old visual language didn’t align to other Commbank assets. The old app had limited strategy to cater for scalability and brand evolution.
Opportunities
Create a recognisable and cohesive branded experience (with CommBank and Netbank). Enable a more inclusive and accessible experience throughout the app, and create a design a system that can evolve as CommBank's customers needs develop and brand responds to change.
Concept, diverge & explore
User research
Quantitative research
Quant: 1500 participants
Concept #1
Concept #2
Current styles
Summary
Qualitative research
Qual: 36 participants
Concept #1
Concept #2
Research summary & key learnings
The research process was not about finding a clear winner but rather extracting the best traits and opportunities to iterate on.
Overall, most customers saw both concepts as a positive improvement from the old design, which they admitted had been in place for a long time.
Concept #1
Seen as strongly reflecting the CommBank brand, with its use of the easily recognisable yellow and black. Associations for this design style included ‘clean’, ‘simple’ and ‘professional’. Some customers noted this would continue to support the App’s strength in being easy to use. Universally, customers acknowledged this style, while well-linked to the current brand, wouldn’t signal a considerable leap forward for the bank.
Concept #2
Some customers found the illustrative style to be creative and fresh; while others found it busy and lacking the gravitas required of a banking app. However, most agreed that this style would represent a considerable step change for CBA. This needed to be used carefully to balance branding and professionalism.
Outcome
Taking what was successful from both sets of research I created a design that was reviewed with the team, senior stakeholders and upper management
Pilot design
Pilot feedback
There were 1200+ participants on the app 4.0 pilot. We typically consider no feedback as a positive signal around visual design. Though, we saw verbatim that the design had a stronger connection to brand and had a more progressive feel and they loved the abillity to customise their background.
We did receive concerns around the brightness of the yellow background and people wanted the ability to add their own background image!
Customer launch
Customer feedback
Continuous improvement
Constantly improving and innovating to make things simple and easy for our customers and each other is imperative.
I created prototypes to show the business how we could improve the dashboard experience. Some of these being; adding a tab nav, updating the dashboard cards and adding ‘auto edit’ to the home screen.
This was picked up by the dev team and built.
Visual ergonomics
This redesign catered for our millions of users with diverse needs. The reason people prefer, and often crave, personalised experiences is that it leaves them feeling like their interests and preferences have been taken into account. When they know the content that is being displayed is tailored to them, it provides a more enjoyable, comfortable and desirable experience.
One of the ways we did this was allowing users to customise their app background to make the experience delightful and uplifting. I collaborated with Brand and Getty Images to curate a new set of wallpapers for different customer segments via series of creative briefs.
Dark mode
We did extensive work enabling dark mode so customers would be able to change the interface to an experience that suited them.
Accessibility
Cohesive experience
This was a big visual change for the app, so for this to work and filter down to other areas of the app, I arranged numerous collaboration sessions with mobile designers and developers. This made an improvement in the way we worked as a team, which also allowed us to continually deliver high quality products.
Accounts and payments design
While managing and delivering multiple pieces of my own work. I contributed to the strategic design direction and creative vision of Accounts and Payments. Mentoring and guiding designers on these important features, and also supporting the delivery of new designs.
UI design system
To enable the ability for the app to scale and evolve as our customers and our brand needs did, we started building a reusable pattern system for web and native iOS and Android. This not only brought coherency to our designs, it sped up the design and development process saving the company time and money and lifting customer satisfaction. A win win win!
Selected work
MasterCard CashPassport
Complete design of 3 Cash Passport responsive websites.
Haverick Meats
Complete art direction and design of responsive website.
