Firms like Apple, Google, and Twitter have lengthy acknowledged that how customers work together with their services and products has a direct impression on their success. That’s why they continually take a look at each facet of their services and products with actual customers to make sure excessive ranges of buyer satisfaction. This course of is as integral to product growth in Silicon Valley, as it’s in Lagos, Nigeria the place Ladies’s World Banking is utilizing the identical strategies to interrupt down obstacles and convey higher banking companies to low-income ladies.
What’s UX?
Consumer Expertise Testing, or UX Testing, is the method of enhancing satisfaction by bettering usability, accessibility and pleasure within the interplay between a consumer and a product. Researchers study from what customers truly do, versus what they are saying in focus teams or how they reply to surveys. By observing folks as they use a product within the context of their on a regular basis lives, we will study what options matter most to them, and enhance design to raised swimsuit the way in which they work together with the product.
Deploying high-tech strategies in fintech for low-income ladies
With assist from EFiNA, Ladies’s World Banking partnered with Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA), a world consulting agency that makes a speciality of the event of monetary companies for low-income folks, to make use of UX testing on Diamond Financial institution’s BETA Financial savings Account. Our objective was to optimize the consumer expertise to drive robust uptake and use of BETA, notably amongst ladies.
BETA is a protected, handy financial savings account, focused to ladies, that delivers companies to clients by cell phones and supportive channels equivalent to native service brokers generally known as BETA Associates. BETA was launched 4 years in the past in Nigeria and serves over 300,000 clients nationwide.
We utilized UX testing to 4 new self-service options being launched as an extension of BETA: “Verify Steadiness,” “Purchase Airtime Minutes,” “Ship Cash” and “Pay Payments” -. The brand new options are accessible by each sensible and primary telephones permitting clients to conduct companies on their very own.
We noticed 19 account customers interacting with the brand new companies on each sensible telephones and primary telephones, and we interviewed 4 BETA Associates. We started by studying concerning the customers, their households, their jobs or companies and the methods they use their BETA account. We arrange use-cases or situations based mostly on actual life conditions and assigned them duties equivalent to “verify your stability.” We fastidiously watched how contributors walked by every step, guiding them in a impartial method the place wanted, and recorded their preliminary reactions. As they moved by the steps, we famous the place they struggled or wanted assist, requested probing questions, after which moved them on to the subsequent activity.
Model-driven, user-tested product design
We knew that the design wanted to be aligned with BETA model rules of Easy, “No Wahala” (no stress), and Centered on Financial savings. Based mostly on the outcomes of the UX checks, we really useful that the design optimizations give attention to just a few choices that had been most vital to customers and scale back the variety of steps concerned in utilizing the product. The interface ought to use brief, straightforward directions in native “pidgin lite,” a grammatically simplified English-based and creole type of communication used throughout Nigeria. Directions must also be in all capital letters, based mostly on our BFA advisor’s commentary that just about all indicators in Lagos had been written in, and customers can be accustomed to studying, all capital letters.
Fundamental cellphone customers tended to be much less subtle with know-how, had decrease literacy charges, and infrequently didn’t notice that value-added companies had been accessible on their “small” telephones. Fundamental cellphone customers additionally confronted challenges equivalent to smaller shows that made it cumbersome to scroll by choices and more durable to answer menu choices. To deal with these challenges, we really useful breaking textual content into readable “chunks” and displaying solely the 4 most vital choices to make the menu simpler to navigate. We additionally suggested providing fewer choices for cash quantities and shortening textual content into less complicated, extra recognizable phrases like “Ship Cash” as an alternative of “Switch Funds” to raised serve customers who’ve issue studying
These easy adjustments make it simpler for customers to navigate their BETA Financial savings Account, and enhance the probability that the low-income ladies it was designed for will use and profit from the product. Diamond Financial institution plans to implement the adjustments together with a communications plan to construct consciousness of the enhancements and to coach BETA buddies on the brand new options. Diamond Financial institution will proceed to observe outcomes and optimize the product as wanted.
