HSBC
Powered by Buxy.
A plug-and-play solution for traditional banks to provide a super-app experience for their users. This will be achieved through personalised lifestyle content, a marketplace, rewards, and education offers
CLIENT
Buxy.
MY ROLE
UX & UI Designer, Design Researcher
TEAM
Alexandra Camp, Julia Breire, Michael Palfreeman, Morgan Ager, Tamara Zipporah
TOOLS
Figma, Figjam, Otter
INTRODUCTION
THE CHALLENGE
BACKGROUND
Learning about Buxy
Value proposition
At Experience Haus in London, in May 2024, my team and I had the opportunity of contributing to the development of Buxy, an innovative banking service. Our goal was to revolutionise banking by creating a plug-and-play solution for traditional banks, empowering them to offer enhanced services effortlessly.
Our challenge was to develop a solution to generate revenue from banks and help maximise their opportunities to serve their customers.
We met with Stan, the mind behind Buxy, to discuss and learn about his expectations and the direction he wanted Buxy to go in.
From our conversation we gained three main design focus insights:
Lifestyle: curated content based on purchase history and interests
Rewards: traditional banks aren’t maximising for their users
Education: users want financial content, but bank’s don’t have the team to do this.
We live in a consumer oriented world where we are spending money everyday & there are opportunities for users to make wiser choices with their spendings and save money within their everyday lifestyle choices. Traditional banks have an opportunity to enhance the value with their current customers, with Buxy plug and play, and make a difference to many end users lives.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Who is out there?
We started with 33 and then narrowed down to 4, so we could find out more in-depth information and start to identify potential opportunities. These ranged from the direct competitors, in this case, the challenger banks like Revolut and Monzo and also a large selection of other apps that are known for having highly praised features, for example Spotify’s personalization.
To understand where Buxy would fit in the market, we researched a variety of companies that were either a direct and indirect competitors. To do this, we categorised these into the four focus areas:
Personalisation, Education, Rewards & Lifestyle
RESEARCH
What did we find out?
“This is already an industry that feels me with dread so I like being comfortable with the interface and the design not changing too much.”
- Interviewee, April 2024
Key insights
Conducting general research provided us with a deeper understanding of the fintech landscape, particularly focusing on challenger banks and their impact.
Now that we have a background on what the market is like, we switched our focus to the donators so we could learn more about them. We used quantitative and qualitative methodologies, we conducted 20 1-1 interviews and sent out a survey from which we received 80+ data points.
Of users currently use some form of traditional banks
Said personalisation is very important
Said their educational resources either good or excellent
Only [46%] of banks offered rewards
After conducting our research and validating our insights from our discussion with Stan we discovered:
Engagement:
Users have a high regular usage of their current banking apps and expressed a desire to be able to sort savings
Simplicity & Usability:
The importance of simple and clear visual design in banking apps was clearly highlighted
Rewards Importance:
Generally positive experience with rewards but showed scepticism around hidden catches or costs
Personalisation:
Users desire more personalisation and customisation
THE PROBLEM
What are we trying to solve?
Below are the key areas we need to focus on in order to understand and effectively develop Buxy, addressing the specified challenges and user needs:
PROBLEM STATEMENT #1 - LIFESTYLE
As a user who wants to visit family in New York, I am faced with the challenge of finding the most cost-effective and efficient travel options to reach my destination
PROBLEM STATEMENT #3 - EDUCATION
As a user exploring mortgage options, I face the challenge of evaluating the quality and suitability of available products and services to ensure that I secure the most favourable deal for my financial needs and circumstances
Lifestyle:
When I travel home to visit my family, I want to find the best deal, so I can spend the savings taking my parents out to dinner.
When I book theatre tickets, I want to find the best deal, so I can get better seats.
PROBLEM STATEMENT #2 - REWARDS
As a user responsible for weekly grocery shopping at Tesco for my family, I encounter the challenge of managing expenses and maximizing savings while ensuring that essential items are purchased to meet household needs
Scenarios to help understand where Buxy fits in
We worked on the "Jobs to be Done" framework to help us identify the functional, emotional, and social tasks that users aim to accomplish with the product. We broke this down into ‘lifestyle’, ‘rewards’ & ‘education’. We started by creating 23 jobs.
Rewards:
When I buy new shoes, I want to find the best deal, so I can save money.
When I engage with my banking app tasks and achieve certain goals, I want to receive reward vouchers for my wins so that I can save money when spending.
Education:
When I use my banking app, I want to receive personalised tips / insights about missed opportunities so that I can save money in the future.
When I am shopping around for a mortgage I would like to be aware of the quality of the products and services available to me so that I get the best deal.
THE APPROACH
Focusing on an approach
Beginning to identify opportunities
During our research we explored transactional user experiences that currently exist to understand how people think and feel, we created three user journeys which allowed us to start identifying opportunities and design solutions.
What we learnt? We were able to summarise our solutions:
Design transparency in saving opportunities and prices.
Aggregated personalised resources and deals to the consumer.
Familiarity in design for traditional banking app users.
Use AI technology to provide competitor matches and auto renew prices to help the user save money effectively.
This was a very key moment in the process as we discovered the importance for users wanting familiarity with their banking apps - from this, the team decided to design Buxy as a direct plug for a variety of traditional banks, I chose HSBC.
At this point in the project the team began to split off and start designing individual solutions in total we created around 10 user flows.
Designing a familiar experience, using user flows to map out users steps
STEP BY STEP OF AN HSBC USER OPENING THEIR APP TO SEE WHAT BUXY ALERTS ARE ON THEIR ACCOUNTS, LEARNING WHERE TO SAVE AND MAKING A PURCHASE
AN HSBC USER OPENING THEIR APP, LAUNCHING THE BUXY PLUG IN TO BROWSE OFFERS, DEALS AND SEE HOW THEY CAN SPEND REWARD POINTS
I built different user flows to see how I would structure the app, taking into consideration all the research and insights we have found and try to make things work better for the user. The yellow boxes indicate a change that was implemented after testing.
ITERATION
Sketching and low fidelity wireframes - testing usability
I began with sketching and prototyping in low-fidelity, from this I did a handful of usability testing and have gained valuable feedback.
INITIAL SKETCHES OF THE BASIC FLOWS
Adding a tool tip, mini tutorial on how to use the Buxy features
LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPE SCREENS
Some of the changes:
Implement more engaging language to entice users
Simplify and increase clarity of icons
Creating components
Due to the number of repeated components, similar colour and font styles and that myself and another colleague both designed for HSBC we built simple component sets where necessary.
SOLUTIONS
HSBC Powered by Buxy.
Step 1: Investigating saving opportunities via Buxy’s alerts
From thorough research I identified the importance of users being able to understand where and how to make savings in their current spending. The Buxy plug-in works to find these opportunities for the user.
Step 2: Incentivising users to learn
Positive enforcement, rewards and keeping things simple. While I focused on the lifestyle and rewards more heavily, being able to clearly show users how to invest or simply make smarter choices was the goal with including Buxy Learn.
Step 3: Tailored rewards and a points system
Due to our interviewees and testers emphasising the importance of rewards I created a dedicated Buxy Home plug-in that’ll allow users to pick preferences when they first launch it. This is where users can receive tailored deals and spend their earned points.
FINAL DESIGN
Above were the key screens so for the final design there are additional screens to show the fully functional app to enhance user experience
A revolutionised banking service as a plug-and-play solution for traditional banks that brings a super-app experience to their users. Achieved through personalised lifestyle content, a marketplace, bonuses, and education offers.
Meet Sam, our user
Sam uses public transport to travel regularly into work, he needs to find a way to be notified about his savings opportunities for his commute so that he can save time and money
OUTCOME
Next steps?
Meeting the design challenge:
During my work on the Buxy project, I developed a design solution that tackled the primary challenge of creating a plug-and-play system for traditional banks to bolster engagement and increase revenue streams, aligning closely with business objectives while addressing users' needs for familiarity. My design centered around a user-friendly interface that adhered to the HSBC brand, preventing user confusion and delivering on the three identified design pillars.
Summarising Buxy’s features:
Alerts on saving opportunities
Tailored solutions via AI
Bitesized educational pieces
Streamline integration with a traditional banks
Looking ahead, I went onto identify where the best areas for improvement after another group of testing:
User Testing:
Continue to expand user testing with a larger group of people to best identify rooms for improvement.
Gamified Language:
Implementing more engaging language throughout the app will help reenforce user retention
Build out Buxy Learn:
Delving deeper into the idea of Buxy Learn would help users be able to discover more saving opportunities.
'“Super -App”:
Developing and expanding Buxy’s feature into a ‘Super-App’ will aid in user convenience and overall experience
CONCLUSION
My involvement in the Buxy project has been challenging and extremely rewarding. By delivering a user-centric design solution that integrates personalised lifestyle content, rewards, and education, Buxy transforms traditional banking into the start of a dynamic super-app experience. This approach not only enhances user engagement but also empowers banks to excel in the digital age.
