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Project Details
Cross-team challenge to simplify navigation between the five existing account types within the XP ecosystem: Digital account, Global digital account, Crypto, Investments, and Global investments.
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Company: XP inc
Year: 2022 - 2023
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Product Design Team:
Design specialist: Fernanda Mercedes
Investiments: Douglas Ramos, Mariana Nietto
Global Investiments: Gustavo Schimiti
Cripto: Mariana Nietto
Digital and Global Account: Elen Oliveira
Checkout Investiments: Elen Oliveira
Problem
In XP's product ecosystem, there are 2 types of information: Accounts (Products) and Balances (Information).
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A single account can have 1 or more balances, which makes accommodating the information more complex, in addition to a high cognitive load.
Due to this business model, three main problems have been identified:
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Customers are not aware that there are multiple accounts, and when they discover this, they do not know the difference between them. They become confused about which one to use for investments and financial transactions.
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Customers get confused by having multiple accounts with different time limits and operational hours. As a result, sometimes they are unable to make payments or transactions even if they have funds in the app.
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Customers report delays in fund transfers, often lacking visibility of where their money is, which creates insecurity. They also do not receive feedback for all transactional events, leading to the feeling that the action was not performed.
Strategy and methodology
The main hypothesis to solve the problem was to have only one account per currency, which would address the three major customer issues by removing the complexity of navigating through multiple balances, aligning operational hours, optimizing workflows, and moving complexity to the backstage.
However, after several meetings with stakeholders, it became evident that this solution would have a greater financial impact, regulatory and legal implications, and would require significant effort from multiple teams involved.
Project scope
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Therefore, due to the complexity of the solution, it was decided that the strategy for the initial phase would be to keep the accounts separate, simplifying the architecture and navigation of each one, minimizing the financial impact, and already offering value to the user while planning for a single account per currency in the long term.
Flow mapping
Based on the AS-IS mapping of cross-border payment, investment, and investment redemption flows, we have identified various use cases. One notable case is the longest one, where the client attempts to invest or make transactions but realizes that they do not have a sufficient balance in the account associated with the desired product. As a result, they need to perform a transfer between accounts:
Investing in the domestic market: 17 steps
Investing in the global market: 22 steps
Investing in crypto: 17 steps
Paying bills: 15 steps
After this mapping, we conducted several group work sessions where we identified an opportunity to simplify the flows. The key idea is to eliminate the need for prior transfers and allow the customer to choose the balance directly in the payment form. The complexity of managing the balances would be handled on the backend, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of steps involved:
Investing in the domestic market: 8 steps (reduction of 9 steps)
Investing in the global market: 8 steps (reduction of 14 steps)
Investing in crypto: 7 steps (reduction of 10 steps)
Paying bills: 7 steps (reduction of 8 steps)
Benchmark
For the initial stage of the ideation process, we conducted a benchmark with competitors to understand how they are addressing the problems we identified.
We also looked at other international players for inspiration:
Architecture and Wireframes
Once we had mapped the main opportunities and conducted competitor analysis, we began to outline what our solution would look like. In this stage, we explored various concepts to design the account architecture.
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The main guideline was to ensure seamless communication between all accounts, removing complexity from the user and handling it in the backend.
With this initial version of the architecture, we created some low-fidelity wireframes to validate the concept with all project stakeholders.
Design critique
In the wireframes, considering the initial problems and mainly reorganizing the app's layout, we created two concepts:
Version A has a customer usage horizon concept, where crypto carries the same weight as investments, and each balance intended for investment is placed in a second level of navigation.
Version B has the concept of balance for transactions and balance for investments, with crypto being placed in a second level within national investments, and we will have only one balance for investment (instead of 3).
To co-create and refine the concepts, I planned a workshop involving representatives from all the products that had an interface with the project, divided into two phases: one to critique the transactional flows and another dedicated to the home page of each product.
The workshop involved about 30 people from 6 different areas, and the objective was to determine what each concept could offer best, map the risks of each one, and refine the hypotheses.
Prototype and Testing
During the user testing phase, we conducted 3 rounds:
The first test was an quantitative unmoderated usability test using the Maze tool, where we presented a low-fidelity prototype to prevent information leakage.
The main objective of this stage was to understand the customer's path to find each account type and assess if it is clear to them what each one is for (investing vs. transacting).
In the interviews with advisors using a qualitative concept testing methodology, we presented both versions and sought to understand the perception of the advisors who interact with end users on a daily basis.
In the creation of the high-fidelity prototype, we have already made adjustments based on the learnings from previous stages, and we proceeded to conduct qualitative usability testing with end users. The main objective of this testing was to refine the final user experience that would be proposed.
Interface and delivery
After the tests, we refined the User Interfaces and proceeded to create the handoff documentation to deliver the project.
Accessibility and Metrics
Ensuring accessibility and tracking metrics have been an integral part of our project. We have implemented various measures to make our system more accessible to users with disabilities, such as providing alternative text for images, ensuring compatibility with assistive technologies and screen readers, and adhering to WCAG guidelines.
In terms of metrics, we have delivered a robust tracking framework to monitor and collect data on user interactions, user flow, and overall system performance. This data helps us analyze user behavior, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the user experience.
Learnings
Throughout this project, I faced my biggest professional challenge at XP Inc. It was an intense endeavor due to the project's size, involvement of various stakeholders, and tight deadline. However, I can say that the learnings were invaluable.
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Through the project, I was able to enhance my ability to create intuitive and visually appealing interfaces. I gained an understanding of the importance of UX writing in using clear and concise language to guide users. I had the opportunity to deepen my knowledge of UX research through various methods. I also recognized the significance of measuring UX metrics and prioritizing digital accessibility from the start.
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Overall, this project was a challenging yet rewarding journey. I had the opportunity to refine multiple skills and I am proud of the achieved outcome. I am grateful for the experience of being part of this large-scale project at XP Inc.