Empowering the Digital Bank: Combining the physical with the virtual
The relationships we form with our families and wider communities are a sum of the myriad ways we think about, interact with and respond to each other. The way we perceive the world is a combination of what we can physically touch and feel, and that which we remember or imagine.
In other words, our world has always been a combination of the physical and virtual – this experience is not new for humans – and nor is the fact that technology has often been the enhancing or facilitating factor. Reading books, talking on the phone and listening to the radio are all examples of technology-facilitated experiences that we have been introduced to, become familiar with and then can’t live without.
When people talk now about the blurred boundaries between the physical and virtual, two viewpoints are usually discussed. The first is that electronic technologies have positively revolutionized how we can do things virtually, remotely and at large scale – that we can do anything we want, anytime. Or conversely, that these technologies have led to the negative fragmentation of human values and the lamentable loss of attention.
Our lives, though, don’t just have one mode or one speed. There are times where we want to savor things slowly and times when we want to be ruthlessly efficient and productive.
Designing for meaningful human experiences
Designers design for the intangible and the tangible at the same time, for an overall experiential intent. They design the colors, textures, pace and flow of the things we use and interact with every day – from the houses we live in to the apps on our phones. And in tracking and fuelling trends in products and services, designers reflect the continuous swirl of social viewpoints and convention – revealing what is meaningful or resonant for a given era. And as the ambition of design widens and appreciates how wicked the challenge is, design methodologies such as service design have evolved to try and help with such a dynamic and sophisticated goal.
Service design has been a coordinating approach that brings together different user research and design methodologies. And as service design practice and theory continues to evolve, so too do the sensibilities that designers understand and design for. In designing for ‘meaningful human experiences’, and designing for the ‘blur’ of physical and digital, we have to design more allowance and flex into the products and services that we create.
Designing for money matters
Designing products and services that deal with how we manage our money is a slightly less difficult task, but it’s still hard. To design acceptable services, companies have to take into account the range of customers, and physical and digital situations, as well as people’s different perceptions and attitudes.
To design engaging, satisfying and amazingly resonant experiences, companies have to take into account all of the above, but also the swirl of expectations in a physical-virtual world, and the range of modes people have these days. This means that at times they will be designing for a functional transactional interaction, but at other times understanding that our relationship with our money can also be a metaphor for achievement, or even represent an individual’s life goals.
Customers use their money to buy different things in different ways and, depending on what mode they are in, will have different expectations. Although banks already offer customers different types of accounts and channels for managing money, they still have room to explore how they can build on this, to improve the relationship between customers and their money, and to improve the relationship between customers and themselves.
What sort of relationship do people want to have with their bank – is it adversarial, friendly, supportive or condescending? What do we really want our bank to be?
Empowering the Digital Bank
At Microsoft, we recently carried out research to determine what it’s like to be a banking customer today. To bring our findings to life, we have developed a video story to demonstrate some of the ways in which banks can play a much more active role in our financial decision-making processes and remain relevant in our connected digital lives. Our aim is to show you some of the opportunities available to banks to not only fulfill the service needs of their customers, but to develop their brand into an invaluable information service – a service that connects with customers in their daily activities and helps them navigate the milestones in their lives.
About Phillip:
Phillip is a User Experience Architect with Microsoft’s Connected Digital Services team, and has an academic and professional background in industrial design, interaction design, and service design. He has worked for manufacturers, design agencies, and software firms in the US, Europe and Asia, helping organizations elicit consumer motivations, uncover organizational needs, and translate these into effective business and design strategies.
Prior to his current role, Phillip managed the Microsoft Windows Emerging Markets user experience research and design team, and prior to that was the European Head of Interaction Design for consulting firm IDEO.
Outside of his professional life, Phillip teaches design at universities in the UK, helped found the Service Design program at London’s Royal College of Art, and is an Adjunct Professor at Ontario College of Art and Design.
