Role UX Lead/Designer · UX Writer
Team Product Manager · UX Researcher · Content Strategist · Engineering · QA
Deliverables User Stories · Design System · High-fidelity Prototype
Tools Sketch · InVision · Miro
Timeframe 9 months
Agency Internal
Banking with Valley was proven difficult during the pandemic when customers lost the white-glove service they experienced in branches. As part of its growth strategy to reach a wider audience, enable customers to expand their relationship with Valley, and offer products that meet customer goals, Valley initiated new digital account opening experiences using an out-of-the-box solution with limited customizations.
Over 3,000 customers submit online banking applications per month, putting a strain on the customer care team.
The current retail account opening experience comprises over 12 arduous steps that take over half an hour to complete. The technology is old, and opening an account with Valley still requires manual paper and review processes, which slows the time to account opening.
Opening commercial deposit accounts is a time-consuming and tedious process compared to retail accounts.
"How do we enable customers to self-serve and expand our products and services nationwide while growing our assets?"
I partnered with UX Researchers and Product Managers to collect and synthesize analytical data and customer feedback that later informed design decisions.
As an out-of-the-box solution, the platform required a deep understanding of its component library.
Post-launch listening programs through exit-intent surveys and diary studies with the customer care team generate actionable feedback to iterate designs on an ongoing basis.
To understand user tasks, I generated user stories through a series of workshops for all three account openings — two for retail and one for small businesses. The product, QA, and engineering teams used the user stories to define requirements and testing scripts.
I held bi-weekly UX workshops with product managers to define requirements and gather feedback on design concepts. These workshops involved some whiteboard and rapid prototyping.
An agency initially started the visual design process, which I took over and established a design system and improved the look and feel. I designed Over 70 new screens (including mobile designs) with a cleaner interface and created prototypes for user testing.
I partnered with UX Researchers to test page flows for clarity, intuitiveness, and understanding of tasks. Testing mainly was successful, with some feedback suggesting clarity around language or labeling of instructions, buttons, and other UI components. I iterated on the designs based on user feedback.
Objective: Gauge how well users understand the process of adding beneficiaries to CDs.
Method: Unmoderated
Summary: Users find adding beneficiaries an intuitive and straightforward process with little friction, but it was not immediately apparent that the system added their beneficiaries to the CD. They prefer to actively save their designations or receive a confirmation that their input was successful.
Design Strategy
Objective: Gauge how well users understand why they cannot fund their accounts with a debit card after exceeding the $500 debit limit.
Method: Unmoderated
Summary: There's a high probability that users will reach the debit card limit, which prevents them from moving forward. Our mission was to determine how to best handle error reporting.
Design Strategy
Summary: User feedback and insights from exit-intent surveys and Hotjar session recordings revealed customer drop-off at the funding section. Evidence of pain points appeared when users encountered errors after skipping the funding area or attempting to link a bank account. We hypothesized that the language and required tasks weren't straightforward.
Design Strategy
