Crypto wallet
Create a Crypto trading section for neobanks that are interested in adding this section to their banking offerings for their retail users.
OVERVIEW
I worked as a UX Research with the UX team at CREALOGIX on various projects. Together with Ignacio Puerto we started the UX Research Lab in this company.
I worked on a digital engagement platform that enables the acceleration of digital products and services for financial institutions. In this case study I will present you the solution we created to have a Crypto trading section for this platform. I lead all of the interviews, and the end-to-end process, such as recruitment, synthesis, and workshops. Due to confidentiality agreements signed, I am unable to share the final design version of the Crypto Section.
RESPONSABILITIES:
Performed competitive research to understand the state of the art Crypto services offered by neo-banks to their retail users.
Created interview guides and
Conducted interviews with Crypto heavy-users and non-investors to understand their needs and motivations towards Crypto.
Conducted an online survey to students from a Swiss University to understand their neo-bank behavior and specifically their needs and motivations towards Crypto (not able to present the results in this case study).
Analyzed and visualized the interview results and presented the results to the UX team and involved stakeholders (i.e. Product Management).
Presented key insights & recommendations to the main UX designer and drew sketches and wireframes, co-creating the Crypto section.
Mediated the Critique UX Design Session.
Design members:
Main UX Designer (Cristina de la Calera)
UX team lead (Horaci Polanco)
Research members:
Main UX Researcher (Monica Emch, PhD)
UX Researcher (Ignacio Puerto)
Year:
Year:
CLIENT
CREALOGIX: A global fintech organisation focus on creating digital leaders by empowering financial institutions since 1996.
YEAR
December 2021 - January 2022
SKILLS
Desk research, Recruitment, In-depth interviews, Create personas, Sketching, Brainstorming, Stakeholders presentation
TOOLS
Miro board, Figma, Microsoft Teams
TEAM
Design members:
Main UX Designer (Cristina de la Calera)
UX team lead (Horaci Polanco)
Research members:
Main UX Researcher (Monica Emch, PhD)
UX Researcher (Ignacio Puerto)
CHALLENGE
The team wanted to create a Crypto section that CREALOGIX can send to a prospective client (before or after the sales pitch) to show how it can be implemented.
SOLUTION
Create a prototype in Figma that the team will send to prospective buyers.
END USER
Retail users that are interested in investing in Crypto through a neo-bank.
PHASE I: DISCOVERY
This section gives a brief presentation of the target audience for this specific digital platform and the research conducted to solve the challenge.
WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE?
All the retail users that would be interested in using a Crypto section in a neo-bank. Since we did not have enough knowledge on the Crypto world we decided to pursue in depth-interviews to non-investors and investors in Crypto in the retail banking segment to understand the needs and motivations of our northern-star.
RESEARCH (DISCOVERY METHOD)
I conducted remote in-depth interviews and investigated different neo-banks and platforms that were offering Cypto services.
Created a team session to establish the main objectives and recollected the main ideas. We established who would be the main project leaders and stakeholders.
Created an interview script with the support of the other team members that would give the UX team an extended knowledge about the current Crypto services.
Conducted 6 remote in-depth interviews to Crypto heavy-users and 7 to non-Crypto investors from my environment (i.e. colleagues, friends, relatives...) to understand their Crypto knowledge, use or non-use of Crypto services, their social context, investment strategies and their ideal crypto services. They lasted for about 30-40 minutes. We used Microsoft Teams to conduct the interviews.
Two members of the UX team were always present in these interviews. Each interview was recorded and verbatims were extracted to conduct an Affinity Wall.
Created an online survey that was distributed to Bachelor students from a Swiss University prior to their visit to CREALOGIX Headquarters. I analysed the survey results and created a Powerpoint presentation to show the results to the students in an online remote session. I freely discussed with them in German & English the results.
BENCHMARKING
I researched which were the European neo-banks offering Crypto services as well as the most used Crypto platforms. I analyzed the state of the art European neo-banks offering Crypto services:
- Revolut,
- Vivid Money,
- Nuri Bank.
and investment platforms:
- Coinbase,
- Kraken,
- Argent,
- Metamask,
- Binance,
- Goin,
- Robinhood,
- eToro.
I studied these different finantial institutions and platforms to see how they are offering Crypto services to digital users.
PROTO-PERSONAS
We decided to create proto-personas (they are not yet personas since we need to continue iterate on the personas as we learn more during future research projects). We chose to include personas because the different involved teams had little understanding of who would use this specific digital platform and why. These proto-personas helped us for taking decisions and to see what should be prioritized next.
AFFINITY WALL
This is the affinity wall we did for the expert and heavy-users interviews. Once the verbatims were manually extracted from the interviews, I posted them in a Miro board. Together with the UX team we performed our first Affinity Wall session that lasted for a day, in which I mediated the questions that could come from the team. At the end of the session we extracted 4 main insights that helped us to shape the Crypto section:
GOALS
PLATFORMS
CONVICTIONS
SERVICES
Non-educated and/or small investors users are a good profile to focus on - both educated and non-educated crypto users demand more crypto education, eye-catching charts, centralization of different types of investments, easy swipe between a reliable predictive measure, information on crypto related news (due to the fast changing fluctuation on its value) and hyper personalization (i.e. setting alarms, filtering the performance charts...).
Heavy crypto users prefer a complete & advanced crypto exchange platform with a high number of available cryptocurrencies and lower comissions (i.e. Binance) although like the simplified & eye-catching charts of beginners platforms (i.e. Coinbase & Revolut).
Banks gives users higher confidence then crypto platforms thanks to regulation - but it lacks a competent & complete crypto universe. Heavy & expert users prefer well-known and established crypto exchange platforms due to their unique universe, social media engagement & especially lower fees.
Although customer support is not a perceived as a must feature, users want quick assistance in urgent situations. Educating users about investing on crypto must be a priority for traditional banks (i.e. through the app and their social media), and crypto-advisors could be a future & necessary service.
PHASE II: CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
Together with the main UX designer we created an user flow diagram. I also sketched some screens (the best idea is to start creating with a pen and paper!) on how the Crypto section should look like taking into account the research pursued in the phase I.
The main UX designer took into consideration the sketches and the research insights and we co-created the Crypto section in Figma. Here is the first draft of the Crypto section dashboard (not everything available due to confidentiality issues).
PHASE III: DELIVERY & REFLECTIONS
During the entire research process I included the UX team and the involved stakeholders to be part of it. After the research was conducted, I put together a presentation for the team and share it, which included:
Research objetives,
Benchmarking results,
Proto-personas,
Key insights & recommendations,
First-draft of the Crypto section
It is beneficinal for teams to have this information at-a-glance because they receive and ingest the information more easily and are ready to take action.
We presented the results to several teams, including marketing and product management. The different stakeholders gave feedback, which was included in the next design iteration. These presentations were taken very well, and the teams felt empowered to use the insights & first-draft for the next phases.
What went well:
The whole team participated in this research, moving closer together as a team!
We showed how UX Research can be done in a cheap & quick way! No need for fancy softwares :)
The organization's mindset shifted towards a greater focus on the user.
Challenges:
1.) I didn't feel safe asking people to participate in the study without giving them any monetary compensation.
Solution: Talk to the manager about the importance of compensating our users, even if they are family and/or friends!
2.) Different stakeholders did not understand the value of the discovery phase.
Solution: I will further educate everyone in the organization on the value of research.
3.) There were some last-minute no-shows, so we had to look for back-ups.
Solution: Try to always have back-up participants in case people don't show up.
