1. Tranformative Transactions:
Designing for New Banking Experiences
Brief
by Alexis Morin
MA Interaction Design, year 2
16 November 2012

2. Design Theme
Money while traveling
Traveling implies spending money and time. Too many
people view this as an impediment to traveling.
Rent needs to be paid, the dog needs to be walked, time needs
to be taken off work, etc...
So many questions arise at every stage of travels.
Can you accurately plan how much a trip will cost?
How can you use your money efficiently and not spend it too
fast [budget]?
How can using your money enrich a travel experience and
help you remember it better afterwards?
Is it possible to earn some money while traveling?
More questions such as these need to be raised through
research as they help identify pain points and opportunities
for improvement.
They are so many steps related to travelling and most of them
involve someone taking at least some of money from you. It is
therefore important that people feel like they have control
over their money.
This situation needs a revamp; something that encompasses
the whole travel experience, enriches and facilitates it.
I want to look into this situation and propose a solution. This
solution should be tangible but may also contain elements of
a service.
Budapest by Moyan Breen, Flickr
Travelers Cheque von American Express - Valentin Wittich, Wikipedia
Screen capture from PayD video - Payson, Sweden

3. Research & Motivation
Some inspiration and companies who've done it right
There has been many services available for planning trips or
vacations over the pre-Internet years.
We can think of travel agents, organized tours, all-in-one
vacation packages and such.
In recent years though, there have also been many online and
mobile services that attempt to improve the travel experience
through many lenses. Most of these are available on a
desktop and/or a mobile offering.
TripIt offers to rid you of the paper trail of tickets and booking
confirmations. The Pro version also tracks flights for refunds
and manages your airline fidelity program points balance. It
is available on desktop and mobile platforms. Offline
availability of travel information is a big plus.
Google Now offers a location-aware currency conversion,
translation widget, interesting locations nearby and
predictive transit directions to your next destination. Google
Now only works on Android platforms and requires an
Internet connection.
Hipmunk offers fantastic visual flight and hotel search based
on price, location, agony or ecstacy. It makes you feel like you
actually have a say in your choice of airfare. Hipmunk is
available on desktop and mobile. They make use of a clever
technique to bring mobile users to desktop computers in order
to complete bookings.
Mint.com is an easy way to connect all of your bank accounts,
credit cards and mortgage payments in order to get one
consolidated view of where your money is going. It contains
tools for budgeting and goal setting.
AirBnb Neighborhoods introduces you to neighborhoods of
various cities and sweetens the deal by showing you available
hosts who will take you in during your stay. AirBnb is
available on desktop and mobile.
Choosing payment methods for use abroad highly depends on
bank policy to ATM withdraws and POS payments. There is no
easy way to decide.
Tripit.com, Tripit Logo
Google Now logo
Mint.com logo & screenshot
Hipmunk.com chipmunk

4. Possible Outcomes
What this project may yield
I am choosing to address this space because there are already many services oriented at making people save
money and use their money in a more transparent way.
These existing solutions are only seldom meant for use during travels. They, at times, tend to lack mission
critical and location relevant information for travelers.
Deep Goswami, Flickr
I am eager to design a solution that:
empowers travellers into going to more places and using their money as an agent of freedom,
helps travelers to plan ahead and have a clear idea of how to build a budget for a trip,
helps people to get around while on a trip,
balances the budget after the trip,
maybe even a little more...
ruifipieggio, Flickr
xJason.Rogersx, Flickr
Using the four keywords:
Transformation,
Transparency,
Thoughtfulness,
Tangibility,
I plan to present a welcome change into the experience of travelling through the lens of money, banking and
transactions. I am choosing to address this problem with travelling because of how frustrating it can be to
want to travel and be overwhelmed by the information scarcity and disparity.
I will maintain a process log at the following URL http://2013ixdconcept.tumblr.com/
I will deliver a mid-project presentation and updated brief on November 29,
a video of the final concept, tangible prototype & presentation document on January 18.
For my full timeplan, see page 6.

5. Methods
How I will work and go about this project
For this project, I will make use of user-
centered design. User-centered design focuses
on producing grounded ideas and designs. I
will therefore use only some elements of UCD
in order to extract key insights about my
topic.
Based on this modified UCD technique, I will
perform research-style open-ended
interviews. These interviews will help me get
a better idea of the design space surrounding
my topic. Segmenting and breaking down the
data from interviews will help expose good
areas of opportunity around which to focus
my work.
Using these areas of opportunity as a
springboard, I will generate ideas for a
concept about the future of money, banking
and traveling.
Once a sufficient number of ideas has been
generated, I will focus on creating a design
which improves some insights gained from
research.
After the design is deemed complete, I will
produce a visualisation of the concept by
making a video as well as a physical sketch of
the tangible element.
Woman designed by Luis Prado from The Noun Project
Speech Bubble designed by Mateo Zlatar from The Noun Project
Thinking designed by Dirk A. Rowe from The Noun Project
allert, Flickr

6. Timeplan
M T W T F S S
w. 46 Brief writing and prelim. research Brief
w. 47 Research Interviews, workshops Compile research data
w. 48 Concept development Pres. document Mid-pres.
w. 49 Concept refinement, workshops
w. 50 C. refinement Pres. document Pres. to Itaú Ski trip to Tärnaby
w. 51 Res. planning Canada Physical prototype building Physical prototype building
w. 52 Christmas Video production & prototype refinement Video production
w. 01 New Year Video production & presentation document
w. 02 Presentation document Sweden
w. 03 Documentation, video, presentation, prototype adjustments Final Pres.

7. About Me
Background, interests and contact info
Hi. I'm Alexis. I'm currently in my second year
studying Interaction Design at Umeå
University in Sweden. After having studied
fine arts and programming, I thought that
both could well integrate into something truly
useful, creative and magical: Interaction
Design.
I've been involved with a lot of programming
work though I now prefer to address the more
creative side of things. To me it's equally
important that things are delightful to use as
what drives them.
I love languages. I currently speak six
(English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish,
and Mandarin Chinese). I love sports and the
great outdoors. Being challenged with
interesting work is what keeps me going.
Here's how you can reach me.
mail@alexismorin.com
Skype: carignan_boy
+46 (0)70 396 3721
www.alexismorin.com
Project blog: 2013ixdconcept.tumblr.com/