From Enterprise IA To Enterprise UX

From Enterprise IA to Enterprise UX
Creating a User Experience Framework
for a (Big) Bank
By ReynhardtUys (Standard Bank of South Africa) and Jason Hobbs (jh-01)
26th September 2009

Jh-01 offices

Standard Bank head office

The Group operates in 17 African countries and 16 countries outside of Africa with an emerging markets focus.

International research has found that for the past 10 years or more banks have been chasing the ideal of full service, self service channel based models (neglecting branch)...and it hasn't worked.
Banks have discovered that the branch remains the cornerstone
of the customer relationship but that its role needs to change.
The move is ‘from teller to seller'; from being transactionally based
to advice and sales oriented.
1. “Multichannel sales productivity” November 2007. Finalta & EFMA
2. “The five pillars of retail excellence in retail banking 2007: a global benchmarking review” 2007. SAP & EFMA
3. “The future role of the ‘bank store’ and its interconnectivity with other channels: a report by EFMA Banking Advisory Council in partnership with Microsoft” 2007. Microsoft & EFMA

There is agreement that the way forward will be based in greater levels of customer centricity, customisation and personalisation across integrated channels, empowering customers with what they need, where they are, when they need it.
1. “Multichannel sales productivity” November 2007. Finalta & EFMA
2. “The five pillars of retail excellence in retail banking 2007: a global benchmarking review” 2007. SAP & EFMA
3. “The future role of the ‘bank store’ and its interconnectivity with other channels: a report by EFMA Banking Advisory Council in partnership with Microsoft” 2007. Microsoft & EFMA

At Standard Bank a variety of systems can be found across staff assisted channels alone. Many of these systems require being used in tandem or across tasks within a single session with a customer. The impact to the user (and thus the customer and business) has reached a tipping point.

The solution:
A Bank wide user experience framework (“The User Interface Design Framework”) which was completed early in 2009.
The version 0 scope spanned staff assisted channels with self-service channels to follow.

The purpose:
Create a unified set of design artifacts to govern, standardise and optimise user experience and interface design across multiple channels to fundamentally impact the customer experience.

The context and legacy
The project journey
Sustainability
Recommendations

Context & legacy

To date there has been little leveraging of the multi-channel opportunities that exist for a multi-channel bank.

Prior to the launch of the Framework Project there were only isolated instances of the application of usability within the Bank. The development methodology followed the traditional SDLC and user centered thinking had not been integrated.

It is key to develop buy-in to these new design philosophies at an enterprise level.
Further more, if you wish to sustain such a design culture you will need to grow it across business units and channels from the ground up.

The “MultiChannel Demonstrator” project, run by Standard Bank with help from Microsoft and jh01 was a turning point for the visibility of user-centered design in the Bank. This project endeavoured to vision a future user experience for the Bank, seven to ten years from now.

For this project personas, scenarios and interfaces were created that revealed customers functioning in an integrated multi-channel environment. Workshops were conducted with stakeholders from across business units and channels to vision these scenarios.

It was at this time that the concept of a user experience ‘Framework’ emerged.

User experience framework

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User experience framework

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Customer experience proposition

There are numerous benefits for the application of a framework at an enterprise level.

A framework is visionary: multi-channel experiences can be defined, unlocking channel relationship opportunities and breaking down silos – for customers and staff.

Considering the customer across all touch points allows one to describe a 'total enterprise experience' where experiences across channels can be standardised and rules can be developed for a multi-channel space.

A Framework provides a platform for sustaining, maintaining and improving the customer and user experience.

It provides a 'central view' of channels (assisting with governance) and centralisation assists multi-channel management (sharing knowledge, resource, etc).

At the individual channel level, future projects benefit from the Framework via inheritance and because it is visionary, it helps individual channels define future business requirements.

At the individual channel level, future projects benefit from the Framework via inheritance and because it is visionary, it helps individual channels define future business requirements.
The front end (UX) framework integrates multiple frameworks (people, process, product, etc) and feeds back into their ongoing development (with inherent user centricity). Strategically, it closes the loop from customer to product to channel

The Project Journey

There were two sets of deliverables: analytical artifacts and design artifacts.

Profiles &
personas
Design
Principles
Contextual
Inquiry
Analytical deliverables included research (contextual inquiry), customer & user profiles & personas, design principles and task design (user & customer goal analysis, task and journey analysis).

Template
Designs
Design
Guidelines
Information
Architecture
Design deliverables included multi-channel journey and task flow design a global content information structure (an information architecture), page level template designs and design standards guidelines.

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1. Design strategy
Project outline
Design strategy
Our process was rolled out in five broad phases

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2. Research
Field studies
Profile & persona creation

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3. User analysis
Goal & task sets
Journeys
Task flows

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4. Design (IA)
Information architecture design
User testing

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5. Design (Interface)
Wireframing
Graphical Interface design
User testing
Template creation
Style guide creation

Business inputs to the initial analysis phases required a massive integration effort.

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Marketing guidelines
Business model principles
Channel & product principles
Multichannel visioning
Customer experience
Strategic white papers
Channel & product requirements
Customer strategy
Defined processes
Analysis: channel user, environment and application analysis, content offering analysis, design and presentation analysis, experience principles and usability testing
Inputs included: Customer Experience and Marketing Guidelines, Business Model Principles, Channel and Product Principles and Requirements, the MultiChannel Demonstrator (visioning), defined Processes, strategic white papers and various inputs around Customer Strategy.

Customer experience
Framework challenge

A direction was required for a customer experience model that would underpin the desired user experience. We took this from a variety of service drivers that existed in the Bank.

A set of User Experience Principles (objectives) were then created to bridge the Service Drivers and the desired experience-based outcomes of the interface, system and interactions.

The User Experience Principles are critical as a tool to ensure traceability back business objectives. These form the basis for the success criteria of the designs (i.e. measurability)

Principles
Themes
Insights
A combination of inputs formed the basis for a huge body of what we called ‘insights’. These varied from business principles from other units, to insights from our contextual enquiry to feedback and analysis from users from extended Bank research. Insights were then rolled up into ‘themes’, which were then further rolled up into 12 distinct user experience principles that would guide our design.

“The user experience must present a single version of the truth”
Principles
“Data should only be captured once at source”
Themes
“Provide timely feedback on data capture errors”
Insights
A combination of inputs formed the basis for a huge body of what we called ‘insights’. These varied from business principles from other units, to insights from our contextual enquiry to feedback and analysis from users from extended Bank research. Insights were then rolled up into ‘themes’, which were then further rolled up into 12 distinct user experience principles that would guide our design.

Along with the benefit of traceability, principles allow you to identify a fair number of broad areas where trade-offs are inevitable or likely.
Our dominant challenge was in the space of balancing effectiveness and efficiency – and although the Framework was only able to address these issues at a conceptual level the benefit is still great.

Framework integration and maturity
Framework challenge

Integrate with people who hold the vision for these spaces
How to develop with a reliance on other frameworks at differing levels of maturity?

Utilise strategic future position papers that outline best practice across areas and absorb guiding principles for the future (in our case for banking; in the creation of the User Experience Principles)

Utilise strategic future position papers that outline best practice across areas and absorb guiding principles for the future (in our case for banking; in the creation of the User Experience Principles)
Focus on the journey: develop user and customer personas and the modeling of optimal multi-channel experiences true to the vision of the enterprise.

Multi-channel journeys
Framework challenge

Customers
Customer brings in needs, expectations and goals to achieve
Staff Assisted Channel
Tasks users’ performs on the system will empower or disable them from delivering the correct customer experience
Interaction
Experience
Customer Experience
System provides functionality, process, features through an interface design
User responds to customer goals with tasks; user attitude
User Experience
Interface
User experiences the interface every time they access the system through it.
Users
System
An additional input was customer goal and task sets and then user goal and task sets. These activities were guided by the User Experience Principles that had been created, and a set of additional requirements (further principles), extracted from the UX Principles, that spoke directly to the needs of the information’s structure and information architecture

Channel agnostic goal and task sets coupled with personas in basic scenarios form the basis of multi-channel journey designs.

Multi-channel journeys become customised in channel specific task flow design.

The information architecture was multi-channel in its scope and conception and developed an experiential dimension from multi-channel scenarios and journeys.

For the creation of the design artifacts, in the absence of a usability practice existing within the Bank, it was critical to have the support of an external vendor to provide these skills, share knowledge and train the Bank team on-the-fly

It is critical to understand that an enterprise-wide framework cannot be sustained without a long-term plan to institutionalize User Centered Design within an organization for the ongoing iteration and support that is needed.

The ultimate success of a Framework spans beyond any one channel and any one environment (e.g. retail). It is here that a Framework can provide maximum value in its application.

At the level of design, growing a broad enough base of capability and capacity will remain a key challenge for any enterprise.
In our case, the capacity and capability requirement alone is daunting with a projected twenty-two odd projects potentially running concurrently within the Bank.
Understanding what is needed for the sustainability of a Framework is crucial for its success.

Sustainability

Capability
Framework challenge

External vendors
Core UX team
Training in other units
External vendors
Training in other units
External vendors
Understanding the split of capacity between internal resource and external vendor is important for the continuity of key internal resources required for the implementation of the Framework across multiple disparate projects.

Because of the nature of the UCD process, solutioning occurs as part of the design; these solutions will span beyond any one business unit and may involve multiple units working together.
It is here that trade-offs will become a challenge and managing trade-offs can only be effectively achieved if you are a part of the debate at the ‘solution-level’.

Your influence will always be cosmetic if you can’t fight for your solutions effectively in the enterprise environment. You’ll need to be able to fight for such solutions at the correct levels if you wish to make a meaningful impact through User Centered Design.
So try to have representatives of the Framework team featuring in the key governance forums within the organization.

Continuous improvement
Framework challenge

Managing the value of UCD for the business as a whole is needed over time (for example, the influence on product, process, people, etc), and the vision offered by the Framework can assist here, but also requires iteration.
For the purposes of continuous improvement the Framework has to have flexibility built into it.

For a Version 0 Framework you want a broad and shallow, but robustly broad, platform from which to continue developing.
In other words, you need a strong ‘container’ that will be able to withstand a variety of ‘unknown’ requirements (screen concepts and templates) which will come in time.

Business unit framework development
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Framework continuous improvement

Continuous
improvement
Implementation

A framework will never be implemented in one go, but rather in pieces over time. It is in this sense that it needs to be visionary.
Your first iteration needs to establish a core behaviour & layout, robust enough to last, with flexibility for iteration at the detailed design level.

Recommendations

Don't get too lost in detail. A framework is firstly a vision for interface interaction; secondly a robust general structure that can hold the screens and interactions for the future; and only then detailed business requirements.

Use professionals. This particular piece of work is far harder than detailed screen design on a project. If you are going to invest in getting it right, here is the place to do it.

Ensure that you have an executive champion for User Centred Design supporting you.

Be inclusive and integrate viewpoints. There are pockets of excellence and knowledge in many spaces (one may not even be aware of the other). You’ll need to unearth all relevant parties and model viewpoints together. The interface needs to integrate all parts in the context of the user to help business visualize the impact of their ideas.

Be prepared and make plans for iteration. You won't get it right first time.

Be prepared and make plans for iteration. You won't get it right first time.
Focus on the user’s mental models: more than just business requirements, the project must be able to demonstrate user’s mental models as an output.

Thanks!