Westpac youths
Changing the way youths bank through remarkably helpful design and features.
2021
The Problem
Westpac is one of Australia’s largest banks (one of the big four) and longest-standing companies. It was the first bank to open in Australia, launching more than 200 years ago in NSW under the brand name Bank of New South Wales. Westpac is a large organisation made up of many individual entities and retail companies. For this project, we were focused on the Westpac banking corporation specifically.
Whilst being a large and highly visible company, Westpac were struggling to attract a youth segment to their banking products. Working alongside a team of product managers, creative strategists and UI/UX designers we developed a prototype to attract a youth segment for a projected 10% uplift in new customers through human centered design. The consumer division in focus was being marketed a subset of products known as Everyday Banking.
The Goal
The main goal of the redesign was to create a unique and compelling customer value proposition and experience for the youth of Australia in order to attract the next generation of Westpac customers. After a recent brand refresh to appeal to the under youth market, the next focus was on making individual Westpac products more appealing to the 12-18’s market.
Overall, the product needed to offer youths the opportunity to build their wealth and manage their finance in an attractive manner. The project consisted of a thoughtful rethink of Everyday Banking products such as savings accounts, transaction accounts as well as digital services and experiences. In every element the brand promise messaging needed to be clear; Westpac is remarkably helpful… in life’s moments big and small.
The Solution
We developed a well-rounded product with engaging features for both youths and their parents to facilitate the building of strong money habits at every stage of the customer journey.
Process: Double Diamond
My Role
Team Lead
UX Research
UX Design
Workshop Facilitator
Remote Team
Jessica Hau
Sabrina Singh
Elena Salem
Carmen Chang
Agnes Boen
Wayne Tikisci
Raymond Zeng
Sorab Del Rio
Michelle Bi
Jiayi Li
Jerry Zhang
Timeline
3 weeks | April 2021
Research
As part of the research process I focused on a specific research framework in order to ensure that we had enough contextual information to make informed decisions about the human centered design and prototype. To start, refined our understanding of the demographic to cater to the needs of the youth customer base in order to start and retain a quality banking relationship with new customers.
This research uncovered six opportunity areas to explore to deliver a unique experience and ensure valuable proof points to win these customers. We also explored the potential for new products, services and experiences designed to help these customers better manage their money so that they can build their wealth consciously.
I also utilized the 5 C’s research framework to gain a clear understanding of the factors impacting the customer experience and driving factors for this customer base to choose this bank over competitors. This research revealed an opportunity to improve the registration process for banking as well as the usage statistics of banking products for this demographic that informed the overall design and customer journey mapping process. The whole process included 18 one-to-one interviews with those in the demographic, this research was quite revealing.
The five c’s uncovered valuable insights including:
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If given $100 as an incentive, this demographic would spend it on clothes, tech, beauty products and hobby supplies like guitars.
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Most parents of those interviews banked with CBA or ANZ
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Gen Z likes bite-sized content and they like to feel connected to others
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Gen Z are highly creative and like to express themselves with characters and emojis
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13% of teenagers lost their jobs due to the COVID19 pandemic
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The gig economy is supporting Gen Z’s in entering the workforce
I used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to garner further insights into this unique customer segment, including 60 individuals in the 12-18 age range who were interviewed to gain a better understanding of this youth segment. Throughout the research phase I also employed the use of a SWOT analysis, competitor overview as well as explorations of the category to see how other brands in complementary industries were engaging with youth customers. Our SWOT analysis showed that whilst Westpac are a long-standing bank currently capturing the millennial market well, they needed to shift focus to creating more user friendly products for a youth market. At the time of the project they had done no existing research of their own into the youth market and the account names did not resonate with the youth of today.
We also found through our research that youths have relatively short attention spans which in turn influenced our designs for the monthly financial review looking mimicking the design of a Snapchat story view to increase engagement and increase chance of regular usage. Ultimately I defined the key problems faced by this large group and ended up dividing the overall youth category into four key customer personas to further inform the research and ideation phase of the project. From then on we began trying to create practical solutions based on the individual user persona pain points and ideated opportunities for adding useful features to engage each group effectively.
What I Discovered
Throughout the research process I uncovered six core opportunity areas for Westpac to explore in order to meet the needs of the 12-18 customer bracket. With the three clear customer personas in mind, this meant implementing the how might we framework in order to drill down on the problems at hand and the methods we could use to solve these for each group of customers.
With the research phase complete I moved into defining the problem further using the findings from the surveys, interviews, How Might We framework and SWOT analysis. Ultimately the goal of this project was to attract new youth segment customers as well as provide a compelling value proposition with a focus on creating healthy money habits for life.
Persona
I defined these problems using the How Might We framework.
HMW attract 10% more customers in the youth market segment?
HMW help Sophie manage her money as she navigates through high school so that she can enjoy life's big and small moments?
HMW help Liam and Emily understand and track how much money Liam has, and what he must do to attain a sustainable financial goal, and help celebrate achieving it
The three customer personas that emerged were Sophie, Emily and Liam.
Let’s explore them in more detail.
Sophie is a 17 year old student who while going to high school is working part time at Woolworths for some extra cash on the side. She’s finding that she doesn’t have enough time to enjoy leisure activities now that she’s juggling school and work but she’s motivated to move out of home soon. She may need to reduce her hours at work, and if she does, she’ll need help managing her budget.
Liam is a 14 year old student who doesn’t have a job yet and is quite introverted. He’s feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to juggle all of his hobbies with his homework from school. He wishes there was a quicker way to get his hands on the latest gaming technology and other fun stuff. He often feels like he needs to keep up with what his friends are doing.
Emily is a 43 year old mother of two kids aged 14 and 17. She’s an extrovert who loves spending time with her friends and family. She’s time-poor as she balances an exciting career with raising her two school-aged kids. She’s the budgeter of her household and is now concerned about the financial future of her children, and wants to support them in achieving their own financial goals.
Ideation workshops
We also used the Crazy 8’s framework in co-design workshop to dig deeper into the pain points of each customer persona.
The idea of this exercise is to generate as many ideas as possible to then choose from to help create a Minimum Viable Product. Our features for the product fell into six feature categories:
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Tasks
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Mailbox and Notifications
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Customizability
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Rewards Hub
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Digiwallet
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Goals
Throughout this define phase we were able to come up with creative and innovative features to improve the experience for both parents and school-aged children who were entering the banking world for the first time. For example, we ideated a feature for parents to be able to reward their children for reaching goals with a financial incentive. It’s taken the traditional pocket money to a whole new level.
As a bank, Westpac’s goal was to reduce the load of everyday tasks and provide a simple solution for managing payments, expenses and budgeting. Through research we identified the importance of offering customers ways to have social impact with their banking as well as offering tools to help youth customers learn to budget and plan for the long-term.
The customer journey centered around six key phases including:
● Discover
● Consider
● Commit
● First Use
● Ongoing Use
● Evolve
Every stage of the customer journey needed to be considered in successfully designing a product to attract and retain these new youth customers. Westpac were mindful of the fact that when customers turn 18 they enter a new life stage and transition point that could be a retention risk for them. This needed to be considered in the customer journey and specifically was addressed in the evolve section. Another element that needed to be addressed was compliance; considering the legislative and compliance boundaries that we need to operate within as a bank when dealing with minors.
Despite the differences of the three key personas we explored throughout the project, there was a lot of crossover in common needs and desires that unified them. From managing money, tracking it, getting it and spending it, these were the four key action areas that all personas were mindful of and needed intuitive features for within the design.
As far as the customer journey was concerned, the key activities across the entire youth demographic included considering products, opening an account, activating and setting up accounts and cards, using the products, building savings and exploring digital features for financial education purposes.
Once all research components had been completed we began to consider the features and tools that would be most of value for the four customer personas. This was conducted in a highly engaging Remote Co-Design workshop I facilitated for 14 individuals including four from Westpac via Miro, a digital whiteboard platform, which covered the core needs of each demographic while exploring the problems at hand. During the session, we also reflected on how might we statements to come up with practical solutions to key problems faced by the bank and their potential customers. Using the high value and easy quadrant the project team voted on the most important features to include in the creation of the minimum viable product.
Using this process we clarified the features and education pieces that would best alleviate the frustrations and challenges faced by Emily, Liam and Sophie, our personas for the session.
Wireframes and user flows were voted on in order to begin developing a structure for the first low-fi prototype. The goal of the ideation session was to humanize users of the product and pull together a plan for the first round of the project. We also explored how existing products could be expanded to meet the evolving needs of the youth of Australia.
After the low-fi prototype was completed we met as a team to assess and expand on the designs in order to develop a mid-fi prototype that could be delivered to the team. Throughout the design process we ensured that we were including elements of a digital experience that were fun, engaging and motivating. These experiences needed to deliver on the brand promise of being ‘remarkably helpful... In life’s big and small moments’.
Prototype
After ideating potential features with the workshop participants, I prioritised elements that focused on key life moments, needs, pains and the experience overall. We used a future state journey map to help cross-check the usability and function of the prototypes created as a team.
I also spent a lot of time testing the product with real users, focusing on guerilla usability testing and 1:1 interviews to gather feedback for the next iteration of the product. We found through our research that only 56% of people would feel comfortable sharing their monthly summary on social media as it’s quite personal.
Our mascot Wes the Wombat is an important part of our project design as he is the guidance point for the youth users of the Minimum Viable Product. We also user-tested on Wes and created a different version from the previous prototype to ensure that the character would be well-received by all personas in the youth audience. Through user testing we found that the product was perceived as fun and playful however individuals weren’t interested in speaking to Wes for every interaction centered around goals.
Through the use of heat mapping we uncovered opportunities for additional features like the ability to set a task while on the goal page of the app. We also decided to add the mailbox to the homepage to improve usability of the product as a whole. In the family hub there are parental controls, parents can create tasks for their children and reward them for achieving their goals.
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The overall feedback from respondents in our Sophie demographic was ⅘ stars which was a great result. Feedback from those in our Liam demographic highlighted that their interest in using a product like this was around 60-70% positive. When speaking with our Emily demographic group they shared that they really enjoyed the reward feature for children as it felt a lot more personal than simply giving money and highlighted an average 8/10 chance of using the product.
Using the feedback from user testing we began to finalise the product including updating Wes the Wombat’s design, and elements of the chat functionality including the title, mascot icon, and the addition of more engaging language throughout the bot settings. We also decided to change the social media share of the monthly wrap-up to save on your phone for a more personal, private experience of hitting savings goals. Finally, we added push notifications and email notifications to help encourage users to reach their goals.
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Conclusion
Through extensive user testing and research into the pain points felt by our three key personas, we were able to create a multi-faceted solution purposefully designed to meet the needs of the entire youth segment.
For many customers in the youth market this will be their first touch point with Westpac, and potentially for some, their first banking relationship. Engaging their parents through the family hub was an important addition to ensure usage remains high even after the initial excitement of signing up wanes.
Throughout the project we considered the future banking, cultural and technological trends that could influence this segment in order to create an impactful series of features and customer centric designs that mimicked social media platforms.
Overall, the goal of the project was to increase new youth customers by 10% and to attract them with tailored products and services to support them in building their money mindset and new wealth building behaviours
