Bforbank app - Product Design

Designing a NeoBank app

OVERVIEW

Create a Neobank from scratch, building the foundations of the Design Team and help the company develop the business proposition, identify target customers and design the digital product.

 

MY ROLE

Lead & Senior product designer
Leading product design team and working as a designer in a squad

2022-2023

Short story.
Big story.

How to resume my last project that took me 2 years? If you want the short story, please watch this video…

Long story.
Grab a coffee.

But in case you want to stay and listen the long story, take a sit, grab a coffee and I will share my challenges and learnings in this project.

INTRO

BforBank is the 100% online bank of the Crédit Agricole Group, in France. Established in 2009, provides day-to-day banking, savings, credit and investment products.

Their current mission is to break into the neobank space, transitioning their existing products into a new offering.

BEGINING

When I landed in this project, Designit had done a big research. with more than 2500 people in 3 different countries with the idea of identifying our space of opportunity and our target goal. I joined the team and helped with the conclusions where we selected, in line with the bank, our main objective. Key points:

  • We identified 5 types of users depending on their behaviour and relationship with money

  • We aligned with the company leadership team that the most interesting was the Conscious Life group where there was a space of opportunity in NeoBanks.

  • We went deep in this group and get all their needs. We built our personas to have a clear visualisation of our target.

  • We also identified the main Jobs to Be Done

This is a big topic that gave us a lot of info to start. BforBank had already an app in the market, and this was a moment where they wanted to rethink their strategy with the new app. I learned a lot of new things about strategic design and it gave me the opportunity to participate in a project where we have to define even the mission, vision and values of the company. I will more than happy to share this knowledge in a conversation and share the whole process.

FIRST STEPS

 

The company hired a Head of Design and together we started the Design Team. My role was Lead Product designer in charge of the UX, and he also get into de team a Lead Visual and a Design System Manager. Together we started with the foundations:

New Design System

We built a strong design system to be sure we reduce time in development and we assure consistency. The DS was built in Figma using variables to reduce the effort when the app requires to change anything, for example, adding dark mode. We worked closely with the Dev team to implement in Github a JSON file that allows the team to change anything in the app effortlessly.

Art direction

We had to deal with a difficult brand containing a frog that we knew users didn’t like. We gave the app a clean and minimal look with the purpose of focussing in a simple user experience.

We also wanted to give the app a nice look adding animated illustrations in key screens to help the user identify the main actions. Our illustrator gave the app the resources needed and a clear art direction. We also shared this with the marketing team to align the offline experience.

PRODUCT

We organised the squads to work in the different sections of the app. I was in charge of the designers working on those teams and I also joined one team as we where still in the process of adding new people to the company:

  • Customer Acquisition: Main objective was to design an onboarding process that help the user to became a new client in a very efficient way dealing with 3DS and SCA in order to meet PSD2 regulations. We launched the app in September 2023 and he have a conversation rate better than we expected and we exceeded our KPIs in both journeys, biometrical and non-biometrical. Today (4 October 2023) we have been awarded by Google as the best UX in joining a bank in any app in France.

  • Home and main navigation: With the aim of designing the main structure, how to organise the app and define how the user was going to interact with their day to day information including transactions. I was also the designer of this team participating in every ceremony. We are working right now in delivering a personal financial management after delivery the basic features you expect from a bank (see your day to day transactions & balance)

  • Savings: This team has the tremendous effort of being the “adding value” to the customer due to the target we chose and the Jobs to be done. They are working to deliver features that help the user to save money every month and drive the company to a spce of opportunity where the user feels that they are investing their money in good causes. They have built so far a Saving account that allows you to put money aside and now we are working on Pots, Automated savings rules and rounds up.

  • Transfers: We deliver succesfully a simple way to transfer your money. Now we are adding new features to manage your beneficiaries in a very efficient way.

  • BforPlus: This is probably the less-likely part of the app, as we offer product from a third party provider impacting negativaly IN the UX. It´s a business decision but we are working hard to improve the flow.

By the end of the year we will add two more teams to complete the offer: Life insurances and Stock Options

And we also launched the new website (where I was in charge of the UX)

App screens

USER DATA & FEEDBACK

 

One of the main topics was to organise how the data and user feedback was going to take into account in the roadmaps and prioritisations by the different teams. Every design team usually has the challenge of how to centralise this as there are a lot of entry points in terms of feedback, from an user email to a call to customer service, a review in the app store or just a comment from a friend. We channelled this user voice to a central point using atomic research, done by our group of researchers, where the feedback is group by teams and organise with all the verbatims, complaints, learnings and even ux recommendations.

We organise a meeting every two weeks where we share this info with the PMs and Product designers where we also compare these insights with all the data obtained in ContentSquare. We answer 3 main questions: What´s been done? What have we learnt? What´s new?

CHALLENGES & LEARNINGS

 

This has been by far the most challenging experience of my life. Why?

  1. Remote working

    I joined this project in a fully remote position, only meeting the team once every two months in Paris. But the whole company works very closely in the office so there is no a remote mindset. In my experience to work successfully in a remote position you need to communicate with you team very efficiently, and that drives me to the main problem…

  2. Language

    The whole project is a language that I don’t speak. As you notice everything is in French, as they like. Everything that has been designed needs to be in French. Often, I have been the only one in the meetings that couldn’t follow the topics. 

  3. Corporate mindset

    A lot of people came from the main group “Credit Agricole” and it was difficult to have this startup mindset to build a digital product, where people often was in positions without experience, like the PMs or POs.

It has been difficult as I was very far from my comfort zone… but here is where you learn the most about you and your work. Now I feel really proud of we achieve as a team. We have a new product in the market that needs a lot of things to be improved, yes, but as a team, we can say at the end: We did it!

Welcome pack

We worked closely with Marketing to design a welcome pack aligned with the app.

PROTOTYPE

 

I have a prototype ready and I will more than happy to show it in a conversation with all the new features we are working on.
UPDATE: The app is already in the markets, so you can see the score and reviews, and if you are in France, apply to become a new customer.

Siguiente

Financial Dashboard