Nobopay

A digital wallet application for the users of mobile financial service which they can use to transfer money, pay for in-store and online purchases and services. It was a new product development project to introduce a smartphone app for the users of a primarily SMS based financial service provider.

Role

Team Management, Research, UX/UI Design, Brand Design

Team Composition

2 UX/UI Designers, 1 UX researcher, 2 Graphic Designers

+ App Development Team & Business Team

Client

Surecash Payment, Progoti Systems

Project Duration

4.5 Months (Research and Design phase)

Design Tools

Paper prototype, Balsamiq Mockups, AdobeXD, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator

Project Overview

Nobopay was planned as an app for one of Bangladesh’s largest mobile-based payment service providers ‘Surecash’. I worked as an external UX and UI designer as well as UX researcher of the entire app alongside the Graphic designers who were working with the Branding of the app.

The payment service provider was mainly focusing on users in the rural areas and first-time users so the app had to be designed with user demographic-specific constraints in mind. The app was planned to be released within 8 months from the start date targeting the festival season in that region. It goal of was to capture the 18-20 percent market share of 11 million users of Mobile Financial Service (MFS) apps of Bangladesh within 2 years.

Collecting Data and Defining Problem

The target demographic of this app was not the tech-aware users, and the space was largely untapped by the key players in the field. So I had to start my research interacting with real users and identify their pain points. I have collected data from other sources as well to define the problems.

• Stakeholder Interview and survey helped in defining: Customer Journey, User flow, Persona, Device related constraints.

• Conducting a short Design sprint about specific features helped to come up with solutions for common payment and bank deposit-related usability issues with payment apps.


• Interviewing Customer Service agents helped to get ideas of frequent Payment related Customer complaints.

• Guerilla testing with paper prototype helped to identify real-world user pain point

KPIs

• The KPIs for user experience were set for the Identity verification workflow, in-store payment workflow, Sending money workflow, and cashout workflow with measuring criteria of speed, accuracy, and confidence of the users.

• The KPIs for conversion were set for the app icon, registration completion, and Money-in workflow with measuring criteria matrix for promotion to app install, app store search to install, registration process initiation to completion, user verification initiation to completed verification, etc.

Benchmarking & Common Practice Analysis

I have benchmarked the major apps in the mobile-based payment field to find out how they are handling the user flow of new user creation, identity verification, and security features of connecting bank accounts and cards.

Benchmarking these apps helped to have a clear picture of the current industry practices and user habits for certain features and saved some time on reinventing it by ourselves.

Benchmarking process involved:

• Going through the workflow of a certain feature

• Screen-capture of major screens and take note as necessary.

• Analyzing the frictions and possible scope of improvement

• Take note of the copy, wordings, and icons used

• Identifying what matches our needs and what are the differences

• Noting the distinct features or implementation that makes the user experience better from one app to another

• Identifying the similarities or standardized common practices for identity verification and security features for adding source of fund

• Onboarding process of a new user into the app

Benchmarked Apps

BKash, Gpay, iPay, Paytm, Paypal, Nagad, Wechat pay, Alipay, Venmo

Legal, security and regulatory compliance

Since the financial sector is a highly regulatory-oriented sector I had to talk to the in-house security experts and 3rd party auditors arranged by the client. With their help, I went through ‘Bangladesh government regulatory documents for Financial service providers and Banks’ to avoid any probable regulatory violation in the transaction process. I had several discussions with in-house payment security experts to integrate fraud protection features during the user profile creation and source of fund addition feature.

Design sprint for New user transition from SMS based payment to App-based payment

A large portion of the organizations’ user base was users of SMS-based payment systems from rural areas. The stakeholders wanted to know how they can bring these users to the Smartphone app-based payment system. So I have decided to facilitate a 2-day design sprint with the Director or the program, Managers, CSR, Designers, and Developers to find out if the additional effort required to bring them onboard was feasible for now or not.

In the design sprint, I have followed the ‘Design thinking’ methodology with the participants to Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and test the ways to bring the users to a new method of payment. I have used card sorting, User Persona, Stakeholder Mapping, User Journey mapping within the sessions.

At the end of the design sprint, it was apparent that this user demographic is not yet ready to adopt the smartphone-based payment system due to the device available to them, their connectivity to the internet, and their lack of familiarity with screen-only UX practices. So the primary target demographic has remained with the urban users with sufficient knowledge of the current screen-only UX practices.

Space for Advertisements & Promotions

The stakeholders were planning for dedicating prime real estate in the dashboard for advertisements (Not-google) which was a big consideration while designing. I had to plan the design layout for the dashboard keeping the advertisement space in mind which ended up less real estate for vital user interaction features. Some compromises had to be made to keep all control options without the need for scrolling.

Creating User flow and First wireframes

After collecting the necessary data and concretizing feature requirements I went ahead to create user flow of these features. I have used card sorting to test the user flow with multiple users to verify their understandability and effectiveness.

Branding

Since this was the organizations’ first digital product they didn’t have a brand guideline or style guide for digital platforms, I had the freedom to explore different theme possibilities keeping their brand color guideline intact. The graphic designers in the team were exploring new product names and logo possibilities for the product, which inspired me to join and contribute to the process too.

Theme Exploration

I have explored different possibilities of themes and dashboard layout options to strike a good balance among all the necessary UI elements and space for promotions without compromising the aesthetics and usability.

Hi-fidelity prototype

After finalizing the theme, color scheme, and visual elements style selection through a presentation with stakeholders I moved ahead with the fi-fidelity prototype creation with Adobe XD. I have also worked on writing the help texts where help texts seemed necessary on screen.

The screen contents of the Hi-fidelity prototype were reviewed and user-tested by the internal stakeholders and small user groups for understandability and visual clarity.

User test of Hi-fidelity Prototype

After finishing the Hi-Fidelity prototype I have organized live intervention sessions with internal and external users from different age demographics. These sessions revealed some frictions in the user-flow and understandabiliy issue with older which I have reiterated and tested again.

Documentation and Design handoff

After the design iterations of the hi-fidelity prototype and determining some acceptable solution to edge-cases I went ahead to prepare Pixel-perfect mockups, icons, and visual asset creation to hand off to the developers. I have prepared documentation for the developers and had multiple sessions with them to explain the design and ideal ways to implement it. The developers came back to me from time to time when needs has arisen on implementing the design or for suggestions for minor changes for implementation convenience.

Project Outcome and Success Matrix

After the launch, the product went on to become one of the 5 topmost used app-based payment services in Bangladesh. The rural user base eventually started to adopt app-based payments and received the app quite well because the app was light and well usable in mid to low-end mobile devices. The adoption rate and user return on the app were quite high because the interactions were kept straightforward and visual clarity.

Business Impact

The app became one of their major source of revenue as the user base was diverse unlike some other payment providers who were only focusing on Urban users. Also the space dedicated for advertising in the dashboard had a huge positive for the revenue stream.

Latest

The application can be found in Google play store under the name of SureCash, developed by Progoti Systems Ltd. However, The application title and look and feel have been changed significantly in the recent releases, to align with their main product.

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