MySynovus Mobile Banking App
Project Overview
In the summer of 2022, I worked alongside the Synovus Bank UX Digital Media Team as an intern. My main project was to create a reinvented mobile banking app catered to Generation Z users as the demographic of customers/users is largely skewed to older generations.
Details
Role: UX Design Intern
Duration: 10 Weeks
Tools: Microsoft Teams, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Figma
Problem
Currently, Synovus Bank struggles to expand its demographic to younger customers. The mobile app is outdated thus, the backlog of things to modernize is a long laundry list. The purpose of my internship was to create a ‘what could be’ prototype. This included researching what younger consumers/users (Gen-Z specifically) would want out of their banking app and what they need to be better consumers. The problem lies in the fact that as an older regional bank, technology grew faster than Synovus could. My purpose was to create a reimagined banking app to achieve the wants, needs, and goals of Gen-Z users to help Synovus idealize and expand its user base for customer satisfaction, growth, and profitability.
Objectives
Research Gen-Z motivations and banking wants/needs
Explore other bank’s features, designs, and functionalities
Create a functional, usable, and visually appeal Gen-Z centric experience
Keep an exploratory and innovative mindset to help aid the laundry list backlog
Research + Brainstorm
With around two months to complete this project, I had plenty of time to plan and research. I began with a project brief to create an objective, a limit of scope, an intended audience, and a better understanding of Synovus’ background. I then conducted a heuristic evaluation of the current Synovus app to find all of its bugs and possible improvements by categorizing and rating them. The heuristic evaluation was created by Norman Neilsen so by using the created guidelines, designers have a scale of rating the usability of websites and applications. This process gave me inspiration for potential additions and improvements in my capstone project. After the heuristic evaluation, I conducted a competitive and comparative analysis of other banking apps and other user-centric designed apps to get ideas for potential redesign. I decided even though I am a Gen-Z banking customer, I needed to spend some time researching the general Gen-Z population as a whole rather than use my personal experience. I conducted a series of interviews among other finance and investing interns at Synovus as well as unrelated Gen-Z consumers. These interviews were geared to help me better understand Gen-Z users’ banking preferences, wants, and needs.
Design
With my research findings, I started with white-page brainstorming with the Synovus team. The goal of this was to be open to all ideas and then to take the most promising ones to the next step. With several ideas in mind, I created various low-fidelity wireframes of each concept. These concepts consisted of a spend analyzer, GPS tracking of spending, budget, savings goals, and several other edits to the original application.
With these ideas in low-fidelity development, I went back to the same interviewees I developed some of my original ideas to concept test these designs. I did this to test preferences and usability to see which aspects of the wireframes were desired in an official redesign. I then used the data from these interviews to narrow down to 4 main concepts to build out in high fidelity as well as several minor redesign aspects. These four concepts were the spend analyzer, financial education and advice, round-up savings, and supporting user’s environmental and economical values.
Presentation
For my capstone presentation in front of the UX/UI team, digital team, and design team as well as several highly authoritative Synovus employees, I created a PowerPoint to explain my research and design process in great detail. I also created two task-based walkthroughs with Gen-Z centered personas. I then went through to the Figma file to show the application in action. I lastly included a section of my style guide and the inspiration behind it.
Retrospective
As my first internship experience, I am proud of the work I completed. I think looking back, with all the growth knowledge in design I’ve gained, this was a positive first step. Although there are quite a few things that need to be updated and reiterated, I believe this project helped me realize my strengths and weakness’ in design and gave me a purposeful route moving foward
If I had more time…
A more minimalistic, modern design
Create budget experience within the app
Research other trending app designs more throughly
Develop a stronger user flow
Focus more on Gen-Z rather than the general user
*please note that my access to the project files are limited for risk purposes within Synovus