Overview
Kwara is a small Nairobi-Berlin fintech startup that offers a secure, simple and affordable digital banking platform for savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) and their members, who are often excluded by traditional banks.
Tellers in SACCOs are responsible for managing the till to pay and receive cash from member contributions for either deposits or loan repayments and effectively handle customer transactions, delivering excellent client service and maximizing client solutions.
⚠ Under A Non-disclosure Agreement
Some of the details in this case study may be vague to protect the client's intellectual property.
Summary
Role
UX Researcher and Product Designer
What'd I do?
- User Research
- User Interview
- Sketching
- Wireframing
- Screen Flows
- Visual Design
- Interaction Design
What I'd work in?
- Figma
- Adobe Suite (PS, AI)
- Overflow
- Mindnode
Who'd I work with?
- Product Manager
- Sales Representative
- Developer
- CEO
When was this?
June 2019 - May 2020
The Problem
Teller supervisors couldn't drill down deep and get some of the information: who initiated the transaction, basically explore any entry, while there was still heavy friction of approval for treasury requests. I led the design of a new function for the till process to make it more intuitive and simple.
Qualitative Interviews
In order to achieve that, I gathered as much as I could from the end users to understand the challenges they face and how they see the platform making a difference in optimizing pain areas.
“For one task, you have to have several sub-screens to just perform one task which took us back to amount take to handle the customer. Customer satisfaction index went below our expectations.” ~ Customer Service Supervisor
User Profiles
The research made it evident how different users (teller and supervisor) would use the app differently. To cater to this, I categorized them into two user profiles based on their goals and tasks.
Insights
From the user interviews, contextual analysis and stakeholder interviews I gained qualitative insights. It also helped in understanding user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. We then used these Insights to ensure that all product design decisions do benefit the user.
Solution
Using the insights I gathered from the research, we began creating user flows with the Product Manager.
I started creating the information architecture and low-fi concepts for primary use cases. After having a go-ahead from the Product Manager, developers, and Stakeholders on the mockups, we began digitalizing designs.
Usability Testing
We tested the product at current implementation of the Till function meets users objectives with regard to the JTBD. The Live product was tested with the stakeholders for one week to get feedback on the functionality, content, and interactivity of the product.
Impact and Outcome
We released the feature update in September and are excited to be pulling in data from Hotjar with Google Analytics and using it to make more informed design decisions.
What next?
If I had more time, I would test with different SACCOs and their staff users to have context on the different mental models. Also, work with a data analyst to refine the analytics funnels to collect the right data as well analyze it to determine what to test and research more on for optimization purposes.
Other work
