Case Studies > Banca Widiba
Banca Widiba is an Italian online bank, part of MPS Group. No physical office to do standard operations like saving money, send money, ask for a loan or a mortgage and so on. Only its Financial Advisors have offices to welcome customers that need investment or money management experts.
Indeed, it’s purpose is to acquire young customers and accompany them on a financial investment path. As a pure online banking service, it’s necessary to have a strong mobile application to let the customers operate and manage at the same time in the easiest way is possible.
About Banca Widiba
Below a list of the Keywords selected at the end of a meeting with other departments using the Lean Methodology.
NB: At the very start of the project, I was a UI Designer, so my role wasn’t to manage the session, but be part of it as a contributor.
Keywords
Daily
Operate
Investments
Manage
Promotions
Smooth
Financial Advisor
Easy
Fast
Banca Widiba in its first 3 years had a different brand image. My role as a UI Designer was to draw components within other designer. I worked with developers (Front-End and Back-End) to find the best developable solutions, maintaining a visual experience nearest with the Desktop private area.
My role as UI Designer
At the early stage the main keyword was Daily. The main goal was to build an app with the most used functions thanks to data and feedback obtained with a survey. The survey at that time was sent only to the customer with an account. The idea was to focus firstly on them to save part of the budget defined and then improve and add functions along the way.
The challenge comes while working on the project:
The necessity to think about an app with a daly usage and as a link to all of the other functions available on the website.
We all agree was not possible to build an app like that, so the solution was to include different links in strategic pages to move to what we called “Hybrid Area”. The goal was to maintain the users inside the app without move them in a browser navigation, also because wasn’t possible to have more then one login session due for security reasons.
The challenge
First release (2014)
In 2018 Banca Widiba starts a re-branding because wants to change its position in the market without losing its values. A pure visual re-branding:
New logo
New images
New website
New physical product in terms of cards (Debit, Credit, Prepaid) and packaging
The re-branding was necessary because most people didn’t associate “Widiba” as a bank. Yes there’s a claim “No ordinary bank” with the logo but it’s too long, too small, with a font hard to read.
So again, our customers and prospect were really important to understand how to improve us as a corporation. Wasn’t easy, really challenging and everything came while I did a step forward as a UI Manager.
New role, new challenges.
Re-branding 2018
As a UI Manager I worked closely with 5 designer to adapt the new brand identity into the mobile app. I really love to dirty my hands.
Previously we share ideas of new UI components to redesign the website and after some meeting with different proposals, the entire IT department choose the best solution to start with.
My role as UI Manager
While working on the website, me and the mobile app team worked on the mobile app to avoid mistakes on flows, back-end constraints and functions. We tried to adapt the Agile methodology in our workflow, but wasn’t easy because of collaterals daily activity like promotions or internal ones.
After the first month we, as a team, decided to ask for a new approach to have more chances to share our work with other departments avoiding possible trouble. Personally I prefer to preserve the quality of work without the rush to do the most as we can, to deliver the first POC available for user tests. During a meeting with the team, we agreed was necessary to move the release to put more quality (design and code) in the quantity.
4 months more were perfect for us to find the right time to share our work. So the team has the right time to be pixel perfect and was also good for us to share the work without mistakes or missing part. More time meant new ideas, including something out from our competencies to reach other goals like up-sell, new interactions and functions. Last but not least, a close relationship with developers to have enough time to ask before do, while working on something not available in the old version.
More budget, more time, more test, more feedback
Before releasing the big update, we planned user test with the help of TSW company.
They were really helpful because they focused on SEO, user test and user research. I also had the opportunity to see how to do a pure UX work in terms of environment, test, knowledges, user engagement and research and how to manage all of these.
The UX practices starts to charming me during those days.
Second release (2018)
Here a video to present the app to the public
A role change from UI…
…to UX
During Covid-19 years I spent more time acquiring new knowledges and improve others, in between a 3 year course of massage. These combination of events and experiences switched my interests on what people need and feel. What are their necessities? How can I help them to remove walls? How can I make their life easier?
Spend more time to talk with people and listen them accurately was and is what I need to do as a Designer. Was also an opportunity to combine my past experiences as a UI Designer and put on the field new ones. So I decided to lose my role as a UI Manager to step back under the guide of the UX Manager which I estimate so much.
Why this choice
Banca Widiba had an internal software to monitorate users and acquire data to be analyzed. The role change was while Accessibility becomes mandatory, especially for financial services and other institutions. Mandatory means laws, so for me was perfect because I like to take care of people with disabilities. I think that most of online and offline services discriminate part of the people in world and it is bad.
Our tool was very helpful because was a combination of behaviors, rating, comments, all of the UX KPI and my role was:
Read them
Interpretate them
Use them to find solutions to propose
Prototype them with the help of the UI team
Test them with User Test in office / remote sessions
Follow their develop
Reiterate
Really engaging and satisfying, also because I had to put my eyes on both public and private services focused on the whole customer experience.
My role as a UX Designer
Packaging
Public website
Desktop private area
Mobile private area
Mobile app
Financial Advisor platfrom
Had the chance to work with other departments. Acquiring their “What” and “Because” was like went back to school and I spent my last 2 years and half in the company doing these activities.
Because of privacy and copyright I can’t put pictures relatives to projects and activities in this Case Study.
If you want to visit the website to understand more of the work done as part of the company along the years, go to www.widiba.it
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