Two smartphones displaying a finance app with currency tracking, budgeting categories, and savings goals on purple-themed interfaces.

NatWest Banking

Case Study - Concept App

Role
UX Designer

Date
2020

Platform
Mob App

Concept Brief

NatWest are keen to explore what can be done to support clients through products, services and customer experiences. At NatWest, their ambition is to help customers achieve their ambitions. Simply, to put customer needs at the heart of everything we do.

My Role

My responsibilities included conducting user research, usability testing, creating prototypes, iterating on designs and creating a promotional video.

Key App Features

Smartphone screen displaying a banking app with account balance, currency exchange, cash withdrawal options, and savings goals.

  1. Create Saving Pots

The app encourages to save more using instant creation of goals.

This product offers 3 types of saving goals programs with exclusive interest rates for premier customers.

Two smartphones displaying expense tracking app screens with charts and categorized expenditures

2. Get Categorized Expenditures

Visualize your expenses in a dedicated section that include all the categories relevant to your purchases.

See detailed view of each category and access to each transaction.

3. Exchange Currencies

An option for frequent travelers or investors looking to diversify in different currencies. This product provides access to live currency exchange rates and a simple purchase process.

A smartphone displaying a currency exchange app, showing the conversion of 113 British pounds (GBP) to approximately 151.42 US dollars (USD).
A mobile phone screen displaying a banking app with options to chat, call, report card lost or stolen, find a branch or cash machine, and information about going abroad, including selecting country, arrival, and departure dates.

4. Quick Assistance with Banking Manager

Customers are provided with quick access to contact their banking manager through their preferred contact method.

Design Process

Discovery Phase

Benchmarking

The goal was to analyze best-in-class mobile UX offerings. This helped to understand their main navigation, explore home page, offerings, and gather visual inspiration.

Comparison chart of financial apps showing details of their dashboard, navigation menu, header, and screenshots. Includes Bank of America, PayPal, Chime, Venmo, and Chase. Each app section provides information on account features, navigation options, and visual screenshots of app interfaces.

Direct competition was analyzed, focusing on the features of each product, ease of navigation, and UI design. This analysis helped identify opportunities to differentiate our solution from the competition. For example, only Revolut offered unique services such as currency exchange, while HSBC provided personalized assistance; however, its UI could be improved.

Comparison table of banking apps for Barclays, Santander, Monzo, HSBC, and Revolut, highlighting features like currency exchange, save creation, app features, navigation, expense analytics, support accessibility, and UI design.

Define Phase

After the research phase a UX report was delivered including competitive analysis, brand analysis, market research, personas and empathy maps which helped map the next steps.

View UX Report

User Persona

The personas were categorized into two potential user groups. The “Busy Achievers“ and the “Striving and Supportive” based on the research from Statistica’s (2016) Mobile Payments in the United Kingdom report. These personas along with the empathy maps helped to identify potential touchpoints with Natwest Premier products.

Profile image of a man in a light-colored suit, white shirt, and tie with sunglasses, standing outdoors on a sunny day with a blue sky background. The image includes text in two columns discussing an aircraft pilot named Sayed, his goals, frustrations, motivations, and income per year.
A man and woman standing outdoors, smiling and hugging each other, with cloudy sky and cityscape in the background.
An infographic displaying a person at the center with four surrounding sections outlining his habits, interests, and goals, such as he can't be physically present all the time, manages tasks through the internet, loves his job, and wants more personal time.
A collage with four squares of text surrounding a black-and-white photograph of a happy woman holding a child. The background features large, faint, partially visible words related to sayings and trends.

Issues to Address

  • Customer reviews and ratings of existing Premier App.

  • User flow on the website directs to call.

  • Competitors banks offer more flexibility and extra features.

  • Only 60% NatWest users agree they have good customer service.

  • Users are willing but can not organize savings for different goals within the app.

  • Users find it hard to manage spending in their banking app.

User Stories

  • As a user, I want to quickly contact my banking manager so I can resolve issues as efficiently as possible.

  • As a user, I want to see my spending broken down by category so I can better understand and manage my expenses.

  • As a user, I want to access live currency exchange rates and purchase foreign currencies so I can manage my international finances with ease.

  • As a user, I want to create saving goals tailored to my needs so I can stay motivated and track my financial progress.

Information Architecture

Flowchart menu with options for Home, Summary, Payments, Assist, and More, each expanding to various subcategories such as Accounts, Overall Expenditure, Transfer Money, Contact Us, Cards, and Settings.

Ideation

User Flows

Flowchart diagram illustrating a website menu structure with sections for Help, Summary, Home, Goals, Rewards, Contact Us, Live Chat, Direct Call, and other options, using purple and light purple colors.

Wireframes

Series of smartphone screens displaying a financial budgeting app, showing expense tracking, savings goals, currency exchange, and notification features.

Deliver

Hi-Fi screens

Screenshots of a banking mobile app interface showing account balance, transaction categories, currency exchange, and customer support options.

This project was created as part of a series of the UX, Interactive Design, Mobile Apps and Wearable Devices project of the Postgraduate Degree in Interactive Media Practice (MA), from the University of Westminster.