TD Bank refers to Toronto-Dominion Bank, a financial services group based in Canada. As a current customer & former employee, I made it my personal goal to improve TD’s mobile experience for its diverse group of users. From 2015 to 2018 employed as Customer Experience Associate, I inquired enough user information to begin my personal redesign project.
Some customers find it difficult to manage their pre-authorized payments and and bank fees. When a customer doesn’t have sufficient funds to cover pre-authorized payments they receive a hefty $48.00 NSF charge. Many times an accumulation of NSF fees will drive customers to close their accounts.
User Research, Synthesis, Ideation, Design Strategy, Interaction Design, User Testing
A solution to this problem is the implementation of low-balance alerts and reminders for recurring bills & pre-authorized payments. Providing a way for users to be more in-control of their accounts will reduce bank-fees and ultimately reduce account closures.
As a customer and former employee, I’ve had plenty of experience using TD’s mobile application. As a concept project, I gave the TD mobile app a complete redesign and added some cool new features.
Prior to designing I needed to fully understand how the NSF bank fees were determined and triggered. Even if an account is a penny short for a pre-authorized bill, the system charges the users account $48.00 for having insufficient funds. Some examples of common pre-authorized bills include car payments, phone bills, gym memberships etc.
To get a better understand of user banking habits I conducted user-interviews. I asked detailed questions such as how often they spent money, how they purchased items (cash, debit, credit etc.), how they manage their bills and preauthorized payments etc. The answers to these questions helped me understand their experience and expectations using the application.
I analyzed and mocked up the user flows to illustrate the path our users will need to take to complete the task of setting up a bill reminder. Because there are many decision points in this flow, we need to make sure that there are no dead ends.
The changes in design features altered the complexity of the user flow. My first draft of this flow asked the user : "Do you want reminders on?". As I reiterated my designs, the number of paths taken to complete the task increased.
Since TD has a successful UI kit, there was minimal asset creation to design the final prototype. I created hand-drawn sketches to plan out the main screens for the new feature.
For my first iteration in the feature development process, I used the styling from the current TD App. Here are some of the screens I mocked up to illustrate the process of setting up a new personalized reminder for carrying a low balance.
I then transformed the old screens using a modern ui design system that matched TD’s brand. This improved look & feel makes helps contribute to the user experience while contributing to a primary use case.
Participants included: 2 Men, 5 Women
100% of participants found Account Fees helpful
71% of participants found Service Fees & Reminders screen confusing
57% of participants expected personalized options for each account
86% of participants want reminders when account balance dips below a certain amount
Users have more control over bank accounts through added features. User are able to access account fee information and set reminders for peace of mind.
An increase in customer experience will result in less account closures (increase in overall bank performance)
Convenient digital alternatives that save customers time and money