Quest
BANK OF AMERICA CMU CAPSTONE | 2014
Designed a prototype to help Bank of America shift sales from branches to their website by creating a more personalized online experience.
Project Overview
Title: Quest
My Role: Team Lead (acting Product Manager)
Team: Visual Design, Research, Tech, and UX Lead
Duration: 7 months
Impact: Built a functional prototype to help boost online engagement and sales
Context & Problem Definiton
Background: Bank of America wants to increase their online engagement and sales by moving sales from their physical branches to their online website
Target Users: Customers currently relying on bank tellers inside branches to help them complete financial transactions
Problem Statement: How can we design a seamless, engaging purchasing experience that encourages customers to use all available services and drives digital sales growth?
Constraints: As college students with no budget and remote counterparts in Charlotte, we designed solutions from Pittsburgh with limited resources.
Research & Discovery
Methods: Tumblr Study, Directed Storytelling, Online/Branch Comparison, Branch Visits, Call Center Analyses, E-Commerce Survey
Key Insights:
One size doesn’t fit all
It’s the little things that count
The website prevents quality and successful interactions
Financial literacy is a team effort
Impact on Direction: Our rigorous 3 months of research gave us a clear path for concept generation by helping us identify jobs to be done (JTBD) and potential user stories to further test
Research revealed a surprising gap in the time to open a checking account in-branch vs. online, helping explain why customers avoid the website for certain services.
We synthesized our notes into an affinity diagram, grouping related ideas into higher-level themes that revealed our key findings and insights.
Ideation & Design Process
Guided by insights, we generated and tested 17 concepts with 26 participants across two rounds of speed-dating sessions, using guerrilla research to quickly learn which ideas resonated most with potential customers.
Persona Generation
After narrowing down our top concepts, We defined three key personas representing customers most likely to shift from branches to online, giving us clear targets for design.
Persona 1
Persona 2
Persona 3
Prototyping & Usability Testing
The following videos showcase our design iterations in action, along with the user feedback that informed subsequent refinements.
Low Fidelity
Medium Fidelity
High Fidelity
Final Solution
Our solution, Quest, is an interactive online search that personalizes the banking experience, connects customers with specialists, and enables them to complete tasks and sales entirely online.
Quest revolves around the following features:
Personalized experience through customer details
Direct access to banking specialists for guidance and validation
Dynamic, interactive search results
Enables tasks and sales to be completed fully online
Patents
The five of us walked away not only with a Masters of Human-Computer Interaction, but also three patents!
Contextual Search Tool
Search suggestions guide customers while tailoring results to the personal information in their profile.
Linking Customer Profiles
The website mirrors a branch specialist by learning about your household and using that information to deliver tailored suggestions and recommendations.
Contextual Search Input From Advisors
To mirror the in-branch experience, the website personalizes suggestions and recommendations by learning about your household and tailoring content to the information you provide.
Impact & Results
Some of the concepts we validated have gone on to inform future Bank of America products such as their mobile Virtual Assistant - Erica.