If you are starting a project in financial services UX, you should keep some important things in mind to ensure that you are successful in your role. Here are a few tips to help:
- Understand the industry: Financial services is a complex and regulated industry. You will need to understand the language, regulations, and compliance requirements to design effective solutions. Before starting your project, familiarise yourself with the industry by reading the latest news. Once you get going, find out who the end users are and speak to as many as you can, as well as other subject matter experts. It’s not easy to get their time, so be prepared, explain why you want their time, and be ready to adapt to maximise the time you get.
- Focus on user needs: Your primary focus should be on the needs of the users. This means understanding their goals, needs, and pain points. Create user journeys to guide your design decisions and ensure that the products and services you design are user-centric. Ask yourself how this help users in their workflows. Does it connect to other services? Who else needs to use this data or service?
- Collaborate with stakeholders: Financial services involve many stakeholders. Whatever the project, it will need to go to compliance, legal, and risk management teams. Collaborate with these stakeholders from an early stage to ensure that your designs also meet their requirements. Communicate frequently with all stakeholders so they are all aware of your end goal and where you are currently.
- Pay attention to security: Financial services deal with sensitive information and require high levels of security. Make sure that your designs meet the required security standards and that user data is protected.
- Test and iterate: Test your designs regularly with users and make changes based on their feedback. Share the analysis with the team, including developers, and keep refining your designs until they meet the needs of the users and the business requirements.
At Norman and Sons, we offer our colleagues a comprehensive UX toolkit that includes a range of tangible assets designed to help better understand our clients’ needs and improve the quality of the services we provide.
Our UX Toolkit includes:
- Insight on personas and their user journeys: By understanding the needs and behaviours of our clients, we can offer more targeted and effective services to meet their needs.
- Design templates: We can ensure our services are clear, consistent, easy to use and visually appealing.
- A financial glossary explains key terms and concepts, helping our colleagues communicate more effectively with clients.
- Tips to improve soft skills: Includes guidance on how to improve soft skills such as communication, empathy and teamwork so that our colleagues can build stronger relationships with clients and provide a better overall service.
By providing our colleagues with the tools they need to deliver high-quality financial services UX, we can ensure that our clients receive the best possible experience.
Would you agree? We’d love to know what are your top tips for working in the finance sector.
