Parallel partnered with TTC Labs, an initiative of Facebookalong with Sahamati, D91 Labs, DICE and CIIE.CO to design and run a Design Jam on building trust in digital financial services, of which I got to be a part of while working as a consultant for Parallel. The Jam brought together experts from a diverse range of fields – over 20 participants from different organisations like Flipkart, Navi, JSALaw, Trans Union, Chicago Trust, and Tala. came together to co-create innovative new people centric designs for trust, transparency and control of personal data.
The goal of the design jam was to solve for trust building in selected Digital Financial Services for the Bharat (India) Audience. How UX can can become the tool to address the trust deficit and transform access into adoption of digital financial services
Owing to the global lockdown it was a virtual Jam, conducted remotely, spread over 4 days as opposed to a 1 day session. Since there was limited time, to avoid the users to get stuck on learning a new concept from the beginning, a customer journey map for existing fictional apps was showcased with key pain points highlighted to serve as a starting point for participants.
Day 1 : Frame the Problem
Discovery Exercises
The day started with two discovery exercises to set the stage and give the participants a perspective on the possible problem areas regarding the trust and transparency in a digital financial product.
- Discovery Exercise – Deconstruct Transparency
Each participant was assigned a privacy notice app screen and they had to place it on the transparency spectrum. Points to consider:
– Is it clearly communicating how and why the person’s data will be used?
– Is it engaging, both in the way it is written and how it appears visually?
– Is it simple and succinct?
– Does it make the user feel like they have control?
- Discovery Exercise – Explainability Spectrum
Participants had to review the product personalisation screen and place it on the spectrum where they felt it belonged. Points to consider:
– Is it clearly communicating what data is used to create a personalised experience?
– Does the explanation make you trust the product more?
– Does it give the user a sense of control?
Expert Talks
The best design starts with an understanding of people. The next segment included sharing of research insights from the research conducted by CIIE.co.
Define the Challenge
Next, the teams moved into individual breakout rooms on Zoom and began the day by understanding their respective products and the people they are designing for to create a challenge statement to address challenges around consumer trust while using digital financial services.
Know your Product
Our team was given a fictional product called IndiPay – a digital payment application that uses UPI to enable P2P (peer-to-peer) and peer-to- merchant (P2M) payments. It also offers value-added services like utility bill payments, mobile recharge and insurance among others.
The user journey we were to focus on was to educate users on trying a new financial product, in this case insurance. We studied the product to understand the current workflows, identify questions and gaps and highlight any key thoughts that came up.
Know your Persona
Next we were given a persona to study. The goal here was to focus on understanding the user and her behaviour. There were two parts to this exercise.
Step 1: A section of the persona was hidden during the first 5 mins and the team had to predict and complete it based on the pre-revealed information using post-its.
Step 2: Unveil the complete persona, allow participants to go through it and point out similarities/differences with what the participants had predicted.
Our persona Vandana, is a female of 31 yrs from Deothara, Rural UP. Educated till intermediate level, she is married, works as a tailor & earns ₹10k/month.
Vandana is:
Exploratory – Keen on exploring new services
Influenced by peers – Tech adoption decisions are driven by her peers
Long-term thinker – Has kept aside savings for health emergencies
Build your Challenge Statement
The next step was to create a challenge statement. We started by listing down the enablers and barriers to define the HMWs. We identified the area of the userflow we wanted to focus on during the Jam and clarified the objective of the design. To wrap up the day, we came up with a challenge statement describing what the team would be working on during the workshop
Challenge Statement
Design a simplified, clear and informative onboarding process for digital insurance to make Vandana more aware about the value and build trust in the new service so that she gains confidence to take informed decisions by herself
Day 2 : Create Solutions
Discovery Exercise – Design with words
Our terms and conditions are too wordy, so people aren’t reading or understanding them.
Each participant had to rewrite a T&C page according to the tone and audience assigned to them eg: Rewrite to address seniors / to make it understandable for Non Tech-savy people/ to make it conversational/ to make it as short as possible etc. Our terms and conditions are too wordy, so people aren’t reading or understanding them.
Keeping the challenge in mind, ask yourselves:
– What are the key words and points?
– What are the redundant words and points?
– What do you gain?
– What do you lose?
Recap & Note Taking
The team started the day by reviewing the progress from day 1 by collecting all the relevant information and bring it on paper and our mindspace: The challenge statement, Important points about the persona and their problems, along with a quick benchmarking exercise on features and inspirations from other apps.
Doodling and Sketching
Next we proceeded to brainstorm and create out-of-the-box solutions for the chosen challenge. We looked at unconventional design patterns that may not exist in mainstream apps while solving for trust, transparency and control. We identified challenges within the onboarding process we wanted to solve and started exploring ideas and solutions through doodling.
The participants fleshed out their best ideas into solutions in form of rough wireframes. Each participant focused on areas that they were individually keen on and not the entire journey. Rather than exploring many at a surface-level we chose to explore fewer ideas in depth. The aim was to avoid getting stuck with conventional design patterns and not use Dark Design Patterns as Trust & Transparency was the goal of the exercise.
Storyboard
As the final step of the day we discussed the sketched ideas as a team and put together a final flow of sketches that address the problem outlined in the Challenge Statement.
User Flow Presentation & Mentor Reviews
At the end of the workshop, the team presented the Challenge brief, with some of interesting solution the team came up with, followed by a storyboard of the chosen solution.
Day 3: Rapid Prototyping of concepts from the workshops
On day 3 the designers started working on the prototype for the chosen solution. We chose Figma for collaborating on designs and prototyping.
High Fidelity prototype of the onboarding journey
The popup notification leading to the walkthrough acts as social proof to build trust in the new service by informing that her peers are using and benefiting from this service.
The bot in the onboarding adds a human conversational touch to the interactions to help her take informed decisions by themselves.
Day 4: Showcase by all teams
The workshop ended with a showcase of the prototypes developed by the teams with feedback sessions from the mentors, industry experts and honorary guests Mr Sanjay Jain and Mr Pawan Bakshi.
The feedback
Based on the feedback, the team at Parallel and TTC labs went ahead and built prototypes to test these ideas on real users and understood better how the product changes affected their perception and trust.
Following the Design Jam, CIIE.CO consolidated the challenge statements, personas and prototypes into case studies and extrapolated design principles that we hope will enrich broader industry discussions around strengthening user trust in Digital Financial Services.
You can view the detailed research and case study here.
Collaborators / TTC Labs, Parallel Hq, Sahamati, D91 Labs, DICE, CIIE.CO
Team / Chinmay Joshi(Navi Finserv), Prateek Jain(Bridge2Capital), Raghav Chopra(Young leaders in Tech Policy Fellowship), Ramsha Qamar(Parallel HQ), Snehil Basoya (CIIE.CO), Soumya Mukund(Parallel HQ)
QUICK LINKS
Day 1 Frame the Problem
Day 2 Create Solutions
Day 3 Rapid Prototyping
Day 4 Showcase