Cobros
Approx. reading time:
7 minutes
Role(s)
Product Designer
Industry
FinTech
Duration
9 months
Project Snapshot
Context
To expand its offering, Moni, a leading European fintech corporate group aimed to broaden its market reach by entering North America with a mobile version of one of its core products. They aligned their existing and planned capabilities with opportunities in the target market, conducting a few internal PoCs to test the concept. After failing to gain enough traction to push it through the C-suite, they sought external assistance.
Challenge(s)
The group was undergoing major restructuring efforts, simultaneously striving to align all its subsidiaries with the parent company’s recent rebranding. To top it off, the parent company had never developed a mobile solution before.
Goal(s)
Design a winning PoC in 8-10 weeks to secure executive buy-in for a 6-month MVP build.
Design Process
I like to present my case studies using the three milestones that we can find if we squint our eyes and take a look at the Double Diamond (UK Design Council, 2003). I borrowed the methodology’s terminology to facilitate understanding, calling them Discover, Define and Deliver.
Discover
Working at an agency meant adapting our workflow to meet both client needs and tight deadlines. We started by diagnosing the situation and finding the projects main challenges:
Venturing into the unknown: this project required navigating through a lot of uncharted territory. Within the company’s context, we were tasked with creating a new product for a new market, on an unexplored device type, while implementing a rebranding that had yet to be fully adopted and no design system to back us up. This demanded a great deal of flexibility, which we exercised with caution, mindful of its blind spots.
Limited, mandatory research: although we had the rare luxury of being required to test the PoC with potential end-users, we had to do so in the leanest and most resource-effective way possible. Our research timeframe: 2 weeks.
Time constraints: we had less than 3 months to present the PoC and, if things went right, no more than 6 months to turn it into an MVP.
Define
To hit these lofty targets in time we had to taper and tailor our methods. Once we understood the fundamental features that the business wanted to release, we bootstrapped each product aspect from the ground up. We achieved our goals through the following core aspects:
Capitalizing on Lean UX: with many unknowns and limited resources, we built a strong, cross-functional team focused on gathering and iterating feedback. In 5 weeks, we transformed the needs and pain points identified in our Proto Personas into a high-fidelity prototype that won over the C-suite and secured the MVP build. Via 1-2 weekly syncs, cross-functional team members from both organizations collaborated to evaluate the strategic, accessibility, and architectural aspects of each screen, balancing the PoC's desirability with the technical feasibility needed for development.
Witty UX choices: since the project kicked off, we knew we had to set aside strict discipline and focus solely on what would unblock or significantly propel our work. We carefully selected our frameworks and the time spent on each, ensuring they would produce actionable outputs that facilitated progress. A single round of wireframes allowed us to validate the app’s information architecture and jump into mid-fidelity designs. With these and some quick prototypes, we defined a research strategy around our perceived areas of opportunity and most complex task flows. We ran 3 rounds of usability tests with an average of 5 participants per round (NN Group’s rule of thumb), as well as a usability analysis conducted by a UX researcher. These exercises uncovered user preferences and challenges, as well as lingering usability issues, which we progressively addressed to optimize the experience.
Truly scalable, highly desirable UI: while most design teams strive for these aspects, few actually cut down visual extravaganza and excel through the ordinary. We embraced the parent company’s rebranding values to build an atomic component library with 15 atoms, 14 molecules, and 6 organisms. Each component was built using design tokens in Figma, which were handed over to development in a JSON file. Screens were designed on top the foundation of design patterns laid by our competitors, ensuring the UI was both familiar enough for users to complete tasks and fresh enough to stand out. This framework led to two key outcomes:
Encouraging user feedback: notable quotes included, “This chart looks amazing. I like the data being so visible alongside the amount of time,” “Wow, that’s really good. I love the quick overview,” and “I love being able to check these stats all the time without tapping anywhere.”
Swift front-end development: the structure and documentation of our component library enabled the team to go from 0 to MVP in under 6 months.
Deliver
As soon as we wrapped up core team validations for each flow, we began compiling the PoC’s deliverables. We held a readout session with key stakeholders to showcase the highlights of our work, after which Moni’s top executives would make their final decision regarding the MVP. We walked them through our competitive analysis, usability test results, technical assessments and dependencies, and, last but not least, the prototype demo.
Once the C-suite reconvened we got the results: the MVP had been approved. After hearing the news, we hit the ground running. The design work for the MVP delivery focused on three key areas:
From PoC to MVP: we approached hand over with a keen eye on the oversights the first stage’s speed left. The flows that had the least amount of design dependencies were marked as ready for dev first, allowing us to fortify those who had the bigger aftermath. We moved away from happy paths to cover for edge-cases and error handling, designing all remaining MVP screens and components.
Preparing for post-MVP: tons of great feature ideas and enhancements began to emerge as we worked through the PoC. Although we couldn't implement them immediately, we documented and prioritized them in a "Post-MVP" Confluence doc. This provided a much more solid starting point for the Moni teams who would inherit the app.
UX QA: the project’s major setback was inconsistent onboarding and overall developer involvement. There were big knowledge gaps between teams and team members, resulting in evident discrepancies between what was designed and what was being implemented. This was a huge challenge, which required active design supervision, bug tracking through Jira tickets and expectation realignment through recurring UX QA sessions.
Outcomes
Results
After 9 months of moving really fast, we closed the engagement with an MVP ready for launch. Our delivery encompassed three main achievements:
Android and iOS coverage: knowing that the mobile operating system market share in the US is evenly distributed between Android (44.99%) and iOS (54.76%) (Statcounter, 2024), we guaranteed our product was readily available for both OS from day one.
Established Design System foundations: designed, documented, and handed over 60+ components with 90+ design tokens following industry-wide best practices, establishing the foundation of a design system aligned with Moni’s rebranding. We maintained a strong focus on keeping its implementation as straightforward as possible.
A platform ready for scale: as vendors, we’re constantly engaged during limited periods of time. We wanted to ensure we had a long-lasting impact on a product we poured our hearts and souls into, leaving an actionable legacy through two main efforts:
Scalable UI: through our modular Information Architecture (IA) and tokenized component library, we ensured the UI could be easily adapted and expanded to meet evolving user needs.
Post-MVP doc: the aforementioned "Post-MVP" Confluence doc allowed us to document all the ideas we had to put on hold in order to deliver the MVP, enabling Moni to start iterating over solid and validated foundations.
Next Steps
Since our engagement ended once we had fully developed the MVP, we weren’t able to work on its next iteration. Nevertheless, there are three main areas I would’ve been really keen to explore once the MVP was launched:
Analyzing the MVP’s performance: this is an area I’m eager to delve into further. Having spent most of my career working at agencies, I haven’t had the chance to remain on a product long enough to monitor and evaluate its performance. I would have prioritized establishing and measuring quantitative design KPIs 2-4 weeks post-launch, utilizing tools like Hotjar, Mixpanel, or Google Analytics. My main focus would have been understanding user engagement, measuring feature and app adoption, and tracking retention/churn rates.
Uncovering user needs: another area I’m particularly interested in is exploring how user needs evolve over time as they continue to engage with the product in real-world scenarios. While we addressed core tasks, I would have been keen to identify any gaps or features users felt were “missing” and compare them with what we documented in our “Post-MVP” doc. I would have kicked off with a round of usability tests 1-2 weeks post-launch to capture first impressions, followed by a second, more in-depth round 3-4 weeks later, targeting a broader, more experienced user group.
Enabling continuous feedback loops: After gathering insights from the previous two areas, I would have focused on setting up mechanisms for ongoing user feedback. My priority would have been designing channels for proactive and reactive feedback, such as feedback prompts, micro-surveys, and customer support tickets.
Learnings
No-bullshit communication, genuine interest, and an overall true connection are game changer: excuse the French on this one, but one thing I sure as hell miss is our Moni colleagues. We put in the groundwork, set aside cultural, timezone, and many other barriers to create an admirable work environment. This was the true fuel for our rocket.
A single team can’t carry out a whole project: setting up the core team for success was, sadly, not enough. Even though our mindset bridged several gaps, there were challenges whose solutions lay well beyond our knowledge and capabilities. We were so excited about our way of working that we forgot to spread it beyond ourselves—a lesson we learned the hard way.
Sometimes the client is not ready to implement what they bought: this was a really tough pill to swallow. We came in full force, with tons of vision and ambition to build a great product. Nevertheless, week in and week out, we came to realize there was a big chance that, due to factors outside of our control, we wouldn’t be able to deliver what we aimed for. This was because Moni’s infrastructure and technologies simply weren’t enough. In the end, being such a huge corporation comes with the usual challenges (legacy, redundancy, lethargy, etc.). Although we managed to address these challenges, not considering them from the start resulted in major technical and emotional setbacks.
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