Purpose
To create and improve Barclays Deposits mobile banking experience
Role Research Team Tools Duration
UX Researcher Me + 1 UX Design Lead Sago, Figma, Webex, Excel, Mural 3 months
Overview
In this project, the team designed for Barclays mobile deposits experience from scratch. I led end-to-end usability testing for the Barclays Deposits mobile application through three rounds of bi-weekly sessions over six weeks. I scheduled and conducted sessions, synthesized findings, and created an output deck that included overarching themes, user sentiments, task completion rates, and prioritized recommendations. Despite the tight timeline, the insights and recommendations were well received by the client, fostering a strong relationship and facilitating collaboration with the teams to implement the recommendations.
Problem
How might we design a mobile deposit experience that encourages user engagement, builds trust, and offers a convenient, easy-to-use interface?
Competitive Analysis
Our team of designers and researchers conducted a competitive analysis of banking mobile apps, focusing on savings and checking accounts from Apple Savings, American Express, Citi, Discover, SoFi, and Bread Savings. We analyzed industry trends and identified the leading examples for each feature.
Competitive Analysis Snapshot
Design Thinking Workshop
We then traveled to Barclays headquarters in Wilmington to collaborate with stakeholders in a design thinking workshop. Together, we brainstormed the MVP design through ideation, rapid prototyping, voting, and using the SCAMPER method. Following this, the UX designers developed wireframes and mockups in Figma.
Brainstorming
Rapid Prototyping
SCAMPER
Design Thinking Workshop Snapshot
User Research
Throughout three rounds of iterations, I conducted usability testing with 20 users to surface user pain points and provide recommendations for improvements. After the presentation, I collaborated with cross-functional teams and key stakeholders to integrate user insights into the product development process.
User Feedback and Recommendations
Over the course of three rounds of user research, I observed consistent improvements in both user satisfaction and ease of use. With each round, I gathered valuable feedback that highlighted areas of success as well as opportunities for further enhancement.
After each round, I shared the feedback and my corresponding recommendations with the cross-functional team. Together, we worked to prioritize the changes that needed to be made urgently versus those that could be addressed in future iterations. This collaborative approach ensured that the most critical updates were implemented promptly, while also planning for continuous improvement in the future.
Performance Feedback
"I worked with Hedy on the Barclays Deposits account, where the team designed a consumer facing mobile application for customer banking needs (savings, CVs, credits, and loans).
Hedy primarily led user testing efforts on the account. We had a rigorous 3 rounds of bi- weekly user testing sessions, so in all we have 6 compact weeks and cycles of scheduling user testing sessions, conducting the sessions, synthesizing findings, prioritizing actionable feedback, generating an output deck, and presenting back to the client and team. Hedy took charge of taking notes during all user testing sessions, synthesizing all findings, and generating the final output deck, which included overarching themes, a summary of user sentiments, task completion rates, generated lists of prioritized recommendations based on workflows, and presented the outputs to the client.
The user testing sessions were very successful and very well received by the client. In this account, we were dealing with some challenging stakeholders where gaining their trust was absolutely crucial, and I attribute the user testing outputs Hedy put together to be a key reasons we were able to successfully turn our client relationship around and get them excited about the direction we were headed in. The client agreed and saw eye to eye on all the recommendations Hedy put together, and they very much appreciated the upfront work that was done to set them up for success.
Hedy is very detail-oriented, thorough, analytical, and has great ideas/recommendations to bring to the table. Hedy is also such a pleasure to work and collaborate with, always such a team player, offering a helping hand to team members to assist any way possible For example, Hedy took the initiative to take minutes down during our review calls so that the team can reference as needed. I encourage Hedy to continue to voice her thoughts and ideas to her teams, as they are always really insightful ideas that consider all angles of a problem. I hope to have the opportunity to work with Hedy again in the future!"
Susan
UX Design Lead
IBM
