Embark on a journey of seamless backend management for the fictitious broadcasting services of AnytimeTV. In this solution, I present a meticulously crafted series of high-fidelity wireframes that cater to the distinct needs of three key user personas: Agents, Admins, and Business Owners. By delving into the intricacies of their daily tasks, I’ve reimagined their online portal experience, ensuring efficient package marketing, real-time monitoring, and strategic decision-making.

Join me as I unveil a user-centered symphony of design, where every wireframe echoes the essence of operational excellence.

“Before we begin, it’s important to clarify that ‘AnytimeTV’ is used purely as a reference name for this UI/UX case study. It represents a fictional TV broadcasting company, serving as a basis for the design exploration. The focus here lies on the design solution itself, tailored to address the needs of various user personas within this context. Now, let’s delve into the intricacies of crafting a user-centered symphony of design.”

I am also unveiling 3 Exquisite Dashboards Tailored to Diverse Sales, Backend, and Business Owner User Personas.

Here is a Figma link to refer to: Figma File

Designing for the Sales Agent View:

That was the overview. Here are the individual screens:

Dashboards! Overview.

Interaction: Left Panel

Here are navigations!

1. Tasks

Interaction: Creating a Task

2. Boards

Interactions: Create a task

3. Calendar

Now, for the Admin..

Now for the individual screens..

Dashboard! Overview

Interaction: Left Panel

The admin (Alex) navigates to Traffic Management..

Interaction: He clicks on the expand drop button on the panel strip..

Interaction: He clicks on one of the rows to find more detail about the incident..

Now for the Business owner..

Some individual screens..

1. Dashboard

Interaction: Left Panel

Navigating to Financial Reports..

Interaction: User clicks the expand chevron..

In conclusion, the challenge posed by AnytimeTV’s complex subscription-based broadcasting services necessitates a design solution that caters to the distinct needs of its three primary user groups — Agents, Admins, and Business Owners. The development of high-fidelity wireframes, complemented by meticulous research, sketches, and data visualization principles, lays the foundation for a holistic design approach.

While the final design holds substantial significance, it’s essential to emphasize that the journey itself, the process of arriving at the solution, is equally crucial. The path to crafting an effective, user-centric platform is often laden with insights, revelations, and adaptations. This process, including feedback loops and iterative refinements, not only refines the final product but also ensures that it remains responsive to evolving user requirements.

Drawing inspiration from design luminaries like Edward Tufte, who advocate for information-rich, user-centric dashboards, your creation aligns with principles that prioritize clarity, conciseness, and the elimination of clutter. With a commitment to leveraging data visualization to empower users with actionable insights, your dashboard promises to revolutionize how AnytimeTV monitors and manages its broadcasting services.

The journey to this solution has been one of exploration, creativity, and a dedication to addressing the unique challenges of AnytimeTV. As we look forward to the implementation of these high-fidelity wireframes, we are reminded that effective design is not just a destination; it’s a dynamic process that will continue to evolve with the changing landscape of user needs and expectations.

Streamlining Backend Operations: High-Fidelity Wireframes for TV’s Broadcasting Management Portal was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s to come with the scroll..

People are reliant on their mobile devices for many things, but most
important for assistance and information, especially when it’s
urgent.

Situation

Batman is trying to keep Gotham City safe, but fighting and
Capturing the Joker has been too much for him to handle alone.

Insights

After talking to the city council, Batman learns:

1) There are groups of superheroes in every city, 5–10 per
city.
2) All superheroes work with a city official (e.g. head of the
police department) that calls on them for help.

Research

Background

Gotham City is one of the world’s most populous metropolitan areas. It is the residence of Batman, the legendary superhero. It also houses the infamous Arkham Asylum, as well as Wayne Enterprises, which has its headquarters in Wayne Tower and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of military equipment and high-tech technology. Gotham City, as a global power city, has a significant impact on commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment.

Personas & Stakeholders

10 Best Gotham-Based Superheroes (not Batman)

Research source: DC fandom.com, fandom.com, Wikipedia

Strategy

Shared responsibilities amongst Batman, City Council & other superheroes

Design

User flow 1: Batman logs in to the application

User flow 2: App navigation

User flow 3: Batman uses voice assistance to connect with Alfred, the AI

User flow 4: AI Creates the mission and rest protocols are followed

Alfred, the AI: States of interaction

User flow 5: Robin is notified about the mission

User flow 6: Robin gets an overview of the mission, along with LIVE visuals. Robin accepts the mission!

User flow 7: Batman peeps into the mission to seek updates, help (Robin) is on its way!

Visual Inspirations

Can Batman get help from a mobile app? AI to the rescue! was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In terms of traditional banking, markets have always been for adults. Parents managing their children’s accounts on their behalf using traditional banking are the competition.

Parents want to start teaching their children about money management and saving at an early age. They’re also concerned that they’ll forget to give their kids an allowance from time to time, and they’d like an automatic system to help them with this. The ATM also provides a chance for children to create savings goals for items they desire.

The ATM helps create habits around positive independent money management for the child and helps the parent keep track of their children’s spending and saving habits. Include money as well. The choice to innovate new-to-the-world products must be made while considering the bank’s value-added methods and analyzing consumer attitudes as well as industry economic developments.

—

This was an interesting environment; here’s how I planned my next steps:

Empathize, Define, Ideate, Design

— — — —

Part 1: Empathize

An automated teller machine (ATM) is a type of electronic banking terminal that allows users to conduct basic transactions without the assistance of a teller.

In a nutshell, what does an ATM do for its user?
Fundamentally: Get money while on the go.
Metaphorically: it gives you access to things and experiences.

—

‘Why have an ATM for a child?’

Parents want to start teaching their children about money management and saving at an early age. They’re also concerned that they’ll forget to give their kids an allowance from time to time, and they’d like an automatic system to help them with this. The ATM also provides a chance for children to create savings goals for items they desire.

—

‘What makes a child use an ATM?’

- Withdraw or deposit funds
- Begin your journey toward financial literacy.
- Consider it a piggy bank for goal-based savings.
- Make positive, independent money management a habit.
- For the novelty of feeling ‘grown up’
- To have a central location to save/deposit their money from chores, birthdays, and so on.
- To save money for anything, from candy to dance lessons, and so on.
- To withdraw cash for snacks, special occasions, and so on.
- Parents can keep track of their spending and saving habits, as well as add funds.

—

‘How may a child use an ATM?’

• Scan of the face
• Touch ID
• If transaction-based authentication is used, a four-digit pin could be used.
• Deposit and withdraw tray
• Audio and voice commands

— — — —

Part 2: Define

‘What issue are we attempting to resolve?’

Making an ATM simple enough for children to understand how it works.
Attempting to educate the child with as few interactions as possible for financial reasons, such as:

1. Learn basic math skills
2. Understand how saving works
3. Establish financial responsibility
4. Saving with a purpose

How can we give children easy and engaging access to their money while also ensuring their safety?

—

‘How are we measuring success?’

• How frequently is a task completed successfully?
• How long did it take to complete a task?
• How frequently did you require assistance to complete a task?
• How many errors were there?
• How often did they give up in the middle of a task?
• How engaged or frustrated did they feel while performing a task?

—

Here are a few things I considered before moving forward to ideating..

— — — —

Part 3: Ideate

The mood at the ATM:

—

What will the ATM for kids look like?

• Making an ATM simple enough for children to understand its functions, for use cases such as securely withdrawing money, depositing money, and creating and saving up for a goal.
• An immersive UX+UI+Voice interaction that allows children to access their money in a simple and engaging way while ensuring their safety.
• Use AI integration to create an avatar of the child and a mascot for the child to interact with.
• Allow parents to set a monthly/weekly/daily allowance for their child’s account using a banking app, as well as track their transactions.
• This ATM is shorter in height and has a touch display, a touch ID pane, a face scanner, a child-friendly user interface with multiple language options, a coin deposit, and withdrawal slot, and a cash withdrawal and deposit slot, as well as Fancy ATM Cards. It also has a microphone and a camera for voice recognition and remote assistance.

—

Information Architecture

—

Strategy: Different features/versions for different age groups

There will be three different feature bundles for children of various ages:

• ‘Basic’ version UI for children aged 6–8 who have little to no financial understanding or math skills.
• ‘Intermediate’ version UI for children aged 9–10, who have better financial understanding and math skills than the previous group.
• ‘Advanced’ version UI for children aged 11 to 12, who have greater financial understanding and math skills.

So, what changes for these age groups:

Financial terminology for various age groups, beginning with simple/easy terms for ages 6 to 8, progressing to full disclosure as the age increases.

There are zero to a handful (maybe) of ATMs for children today, no money management for children, and no emergency money access for children. Parents are unable to manage and track their children’s allowance.

This ATM for Kids aims to provide financial support and financial knowledge to children while keeping it engaging through gamification, gifting, and reward systems, which in turn motivates the child to save with a goal in mind.

—

Avatar/Mascot illustration (one of 1000 possibilities)

The avatar used here is a cat. For kids, poems, rhymes, and cartoons are common. And one of the most common animals they usually come across is a cat! So, yeah, something a child using an ATM would recognize!

—

Trying to materialize the idea by...

Questionnaire to parents: It could be circulated at schools, malls, play homes, popular QSR restaurants, tuition, via email, telephone, and via links.

Element 1 — Intent: How interested/willing are you to expose your children to the above-mentioned product, which aims to provide children with financial literacy and a parent with pocket-money management?

Possible Answers: Definitely yes; Probably yes; Maybe, maybe not. Unlikely; Definitely not

-

Element 2 — Frequency: How frequently do you want your child (whose money management will be controlled by their parent) to use the ATM?

I do not want my child to use the ATM for Kids.

Options: Daily, weekly, bimonthly, and monthly

-

Element 3 — Believability: Do you believe the product will provide your children with good financial literacy?

Options: Strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly disagree are the available options.

—

Research synthesis!

If the responses to "Intent of purchase’ is near or more than 40% on ‘Option 1 — Definitely yes’ and/or maximum on ‘Option 2 — Probably yes’:

This would help me understand that there is traction for the needs presented in the value proposition, which will propagate a motive to develop a hardware prototype and narrow down on features.

If the "frequency of purchase" responses are near or greater than 40% for "Option 3—weekly" or/and maximum for "Option 4—twice a month,"

This would help me understand where the ‘ATM for Kids’ should be located at. Probably places like schools, malls, popular restaurants, and hostels.

If the responses to the ‘Believability’ is near or more than 40% to ‘Option 1- Strongly agree’ or/and maximum to ‘Option 2 — agree’:

this would make me confident of introducing not just the educational aspect but also re-imagine the interaction with the ATM Kiosk with ideas like AI Avatars of children and ATM Bank Mascot which will help in brand building of the bank, and go beyond depositing or withdrawing money.

—

Part 4: Design

The ATM Hardware. ATM silos are to be height-adjustable.

—

Flow 1: ATM Log-in

Children may log in with their ATM cards, Touch IDs, or even via face scan.

—

Home screen 1

—

Home screen 2

—

Home screen 3

End of flow 1, children have logged in.

—

Flow #2: Withdraw Money

—

Flow #3: Deposit Money

Kirby has logged in using face recognition.

—

Flow #4: Create a Goal

Goerge has logged in using Touch ID and now is at his home screen.

—

I believe the ATM helps children develop positive money management habits and helps parents keep track of their children’s spending and saving habits. Include monetary value as well. I hope you liked my exploration of having an ATM for children. This is something that I did in my free time, and it was an interesting experience.

Thoughts, suggestions, feedback: feel free to write to me: @radhakrishnakrishna.aekbote@gmail.com

Let’s get in touch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/

Thank you!

Helping to make an ATM for children — inclusive of accessibility and usability with a Research… was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

FIRM: Mario is a small business owner with multiple pizza stores across the city.

TARGET CUSTOMER: ‘City’zens, Pizza fanatics, Pizza experimenters, Foodvloggers & possibly anyone in the city.

PERSONA: Generational (Kids, Adults, Senior Citizens), Male and Female.

GOAL: Create an online pizza ordering website for Mario’s Pizzas, where a customer can order a pizza from any of
the multiple locations.

MISSION: Guide the customer through the pizza ordering process and upsell add-ons (like wings, soda, etc) without
sounding salesy.

DESIGN FOR: Website

MODE: Home Delivery

INDEX

RESEARCH

Popular pizza types:

Depending on the kind, each type shows how diverse methods, ingredients, and resources may be used to create distinct and delectable offerings.

However, I believe that the form, crust, and preparation method are the most essential factors in determining the sort of pizza you wish to eat.

ANATOMY OF PIZZA

Resources:

STRATEGY

Designing a platform for a new, regular as well as a pro user

Information Architecture

How should the customization work?

How should the customization information design work?

Be the chef! Power to you…

Chef’s recommendations

Watch the making of your pizza, live from the kitchen

Cooking is Therapeutic, watching your pizza getting prepped can be Therapeutic too! Also, increases the user’s time with the website!

Store Calendar

Store calendar to keep the customer up to date and in sync with the events and happenings of the pizza store.

Seasonal menu launches, Seasonal menu end date, previous orders,
Book a chef, book for an event, educational pizza videos,
in-store challenges, food blogger review lives,
new recipe making live, store holidays & store maintenance

Telling your user some facts, History, Reviews, Social Media uploads about a particular pizza

As I spent some time on research, I realized that pizza ‘history’, ‘origins’, ‘mistakes’, ‘facts’, ‘expiremements’, ‘world records’…
Meme’s included!

All of these can make a great story! So, why not keep our
user informed?

Also, everybody is a good photographer today! Thanks to
the advanced camera on our phones, so,
let's reshare what's being shared on the firm’s social
media handles!

Illustrated Messages...

For loading, error, and other use-cases...

…now after finalizing the idea, let’s see how the order experience for a new user with no pizza knowledge should look like

Lo-fidelity wireframes

Pizza Cheuffer guides, recommend and help you order your pizza!

1. Location and Store selection

2. Occasion and People

3. Cart and Type

4. Baking process and Dough/Pie

5. A must-have topping on your pizza

Based on the responses, the website recommends pizza, meals and more to the user..

The user selects..

VISUAL DESIGN

Pizza Detailed Page

Interactions

Customize your pizza

Check-out & Billing

Watch your pizza being made, LIVE from the kitchen with different viewing angles!

— -

Ordering a Pizza from your car!

Here is a story for you…

Wireframes for Apple CarPlay..

Tada… Pizza Ready & Picked up from drive-in!!

—

Hope you liked the exploration and ideas :) Feel free to connect with me on:

Mail: radhakrishna.aekbote@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/

An immersive pizza ordering platform is explored. was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ola Cabs, is an Indian transportation network company offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, taxi, food delivery, and digital purse which can be used to make payments for various merchants.

The v 4.9.9 OlaCabs app, which runs on Andriod and iOS platform has options to book, schedule, and pay for your cab, order food online, pay your bills (electricity, water, etc.), and much more. So, commute, food delivery, and digital money under the same name, OlaCabs.

The heuristics evaluation performed on this application is to explore and understand the user interface, looking closely at user experience aspects also identify the kind of user experience problems and is conducted against a set of design principles.

Content Overview

Nielsen Norman Group Principal by Jakob Nielsen

The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) heuristics, these heuristics have been reflected in many of the products designed by some of the most successful companies in the world such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more.

• Visibility of system status
• Match between system and the real world
• User control and freedom
• Consistency and standards
• Error prevention
• Recognition rather than recall
• Flexibility and efficiency of use
• Aesthetic and minimalist design
• Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
• Help, and documentation

Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules

The characteristics derived from Shneiderman’s golden rules can be recognized in various user interface guidelines produced by companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more.

• Strive for consistency
• Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
• Offer informative feedback
• Design dialogue to yield closure
• Offer simple error handling
• Permit easy reversal of actions
• Support internal locus of control
• Reduce short-term memory load

Gerhardt-Powals’ Cognitive Engineering Principles

Jill Gerhardt-Powals developed a set of cognitive principles for enhancing computer performance. These heuristics, or principles, are similar to Nielsen’s heuristics but take a more holistic approach to evaluation.

• Automate unwanted workload
• Reduce uncertainty
• Fuse data
• Present new information with meaningful aids to interpretation
• Use names that are conceptually related to the function
• Limit data-driven tasks
• Include in the displays only that information needed by the user at a given time
• Provide multiple coding of data when appropriate
• Practice judicious redundancy

Home Screen

Booking a cab

Track your ride

Hamburger menu

Flow 1 — Booking a cab

• Food, Rides, and Money, the three primary services offered by Ola always visible on top of the screen for easy navigation and overview.
• The notification icon records the total number of unread notifications across all three primary services.
• The user is able to select or choose between ‘Daily, ‘ Rental’ and ‘Out-station’ at the bottom half of the screen, in a more meaningful way.
• The category of cabs under ‘Daily’ is grouped with regards to their pricing and type of comfort of transport, increasing user convenience.
• The user throughout his/her journey is given the controls to choose or change his/her mode of payment.

Flow 2 — Hamburger Menu

• The Hamburger menu is designed independently for every primary service and shows the necessary secondary services and information with respect to its primary business line.
• The options available on the Hamburger menu are reduced from 15 to 7.
• The user would still be able to act on the same information, now, in a sorted manner.

Flow 3 — Tracking your booked cab

• On re-visiting the home-screen after having booked a cab, information and tracking on current booking is available to view and action upfront on the home-screen

Flow 4 — Tracking your booked cab via Hamburger menu + Past rides and Invoice

• Another way where the user can track his current booking is by using the hamburger menu.
• The ‘My Rides’ section on the hamburger menu should be divided on basis of ‘Upcoming Rides’ and ‘Past Rides’, which helps the user navigate in a smoother manner.

Conclusions and Learnings

Although Ola cab should let you book choice of your cab primarily, the version v4.9.9 (version, evaluated) also lets you order food and pay bills and more. With this exercise, I felt the application’s primary goal had been diluted into multiple other use cases.

Please note that as I write this article today, the app version 5.2.8 and there has been considerate improvements in the app’s product strategy.

This exercise revised the design principles for me, and, certainly made me feel connected to UX learnings again. Whereas, as a professional, I spend most of my time designing and researching.

The heuristic evaluation performed above is with respect to the Design principle’s as mentioned, and, also after listening to real-time user experiences with the OlaCabs application.

The solutions recommended here are an attempt from my side as an understanding of the common user pain points. I would like to thank all the users who shared their experiences with OlaCabs.

Be there a chance to connect, I would be happy to get in touch! 🤝

Radhakrishna Aekbote, UX Design | UX Research | Product | Mentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/

Case study: The Ola App, a heuristic read was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Challenge

Talking about women’s health issues is a big taboo in most parts of India. The goal is to create an AI assistant that can help women living in rural and non-metro cities find information and remedial solutions about women’s health.

Content flow for the article:

Women’s health & Taboo: Condition, Disease, Decisions, Symptoms, Cause

To start off with this task, I had to gather real-time information on women’s health. I had no background in women’s health. And specifically, to understand what could be the ‘taboo’ health issues. Hence, as a start of my research, I started speaking to two doctors whose time and inputs I appreciate, and further to my research, I spoke to a few female friends of mine whose inputs provided empathy to my research.

Based on my discussions with the doctors, I listed out the most common but tough-to-talk health problems women face:

1. Menstrual cycle
2. Breast cancer
3. UTI — Urinary Tract Infection
4. STD — Sexually Transmitted Disease
5. Abortion
6. Ovarian and Cervical Cancer
7. Polycystic Ovarian Disease
8. Menopause
9. First-time bleed
10. Tubectomy
11. Breastfeeding
12. Mental Health

Further to my research, I looked for relevant data on the internet, keeping in the loop the doctor and a female friend of mine. I got a fair understanding on what is the ground reality on what are the most common situations where a woman needs help on her health from a personal level.

I managed to classify them situations into 3 types, based on the nature and background of each situation.

..and added the 12 health issues mentioned above under each type.

Although one may argue with the classifications done above, I agree there could be an issue/situation which could possibly be an overlap.

Further to the classification, I wanted to understand the cause and symptoms of each situation Which would, in turn, help me add value to the bot in making.

Hence, I continued my interviews and research on the internet to gather the information that would Bring structure to the chatbot in making.

So, taking each situation I mapped the ’cause’, ‘symptoms /diagnostic’, and the ‘help’ that would be required to make the right decisions for each of the 12 stated tough-to-talk health issues.

I started off with ‘conditions’

Structuring the chatbot

Chatbot Scope:

1. Provide information and remedial solutions on women’s health.
2. Guide the user to diagnosis having gathered inputs through interactions between user and bot.

Knowing the stakeholders:

• Early Adopter
• Students, Teenagers, Working-class women, Married women, Housewives, Mothers, and more...
• Age group range in focus: 16–42

Stakeholder Situations:

• When they realize they need help know more about a situation that they cannot openly discuss with their parents, family, friends, husband, etc.
• When they are unsure of a medicine, test, process.
• When they do not know about the issue, unaware of the process, Symptoms, commonality, approach.
• When they need information, knowledge to help Access their situation.

After defining the early adopters and most likely situations, I defined the chatbot personality.

Chatbot Personality: Friendly, Sister feeling, Nurse, Feminine.

Name of the chatbot: HEALIA

Must have features on the chatbot:

• Generic information on women's health
• Remedial solutions Vast range of symptom and cause repository
• Doctor/treatment/hospital/medicinal recommendations
• Articles and exercises on health betterment
• When they are unsure of a medicine, test, process. Updated information on banned medicines / medical practices / validity etc.
• A doctor’s consultation via call, video call, real-time booking.

Importance of Voice UI for this situation

Looking at the audience who would be using this, i.e. women from non-metro cities, villages, taluks, towns might not have access to a smartphone, or sometimes even a phone. Let’s say they have a smartphone, but the probability of them having mediums like messenger, WhatsApp, etc., to interact with chatbots is quite low. Whereas, having a Voice UI built on AI, which by creating helpline numbers would help a larger or most needy Set of audiences. As women in villages, towns can still have access to keypad phones, public phones. I do not know how practical this would sync with technical limitations, but, it is a fix worth recommending.

The Chatbot flow

The 4 navigational pillars.

1- Don’t know: the users say anything the chatbot won’t ever be prepared to answer.

2- Known problem (Disease, Condition, Decision): the users ask/talk about a problem or a category of the problem the chatbot knows.

3- Known symptoms: the user asks/talks about symptoms the chatbot understands.

4- Known cause: the user asks/talks about a cause, background the chatbot knows.

Competitor watch

OneRemission — This New York-based company launched its chatbot with the aim to help ease the life of those involved in the fight against cancer with the information they need. The app empowers them by providing a comprehensive list of diets, exercises, and post-cancer practices, curated by Integrative Medicine experts so that they don’t need to constantly rely on a doctor.

Youper — Basing itself on the latest scientific research, Youper’s A.I. monitors and improves users’ emotional health with quick personalized conversations using psychological techniques. To further help one improve their emotional health, the app features personalized meditations as well as the ability to track mood and monitor emotional health.

Safedrugbot — is a chat messaging service that offers assistant-like support to health professionals, doctors who need appropriate data about the use of drugs during breastfeeding.

Babylon Health — The British subscription, online medical consultation, and health service, Babylon Health, was founded in 2013 and is now valued at more than $2 billion. The company offers A.I. consultation based on personal medical history and common medical knowledge as well as live video consultation with a real doctor whenever a patient needs it.

Florence — The chatbot is basically a “personal nurse” in the color blue, and works on Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Kik. “She” can remind patients to take their pills, which might be a handy feature for older patients. You just write the name of the medicine in chat, the number of times a day you must take it, and at what time. Then, Florence sends you a message in chat every time you must take the pill.

Your.Md — The free platform offers actionable health information based on highly accurate sources and lets the user make the best choices for his health. It is basically a symptom checker powered by artificial intelligence. It’s available on iOS, Android, Facebook Messenger, Slack, KIK, Telegram, as well as a browser version.

Ada Health — Over 1.5 million people have already tried the health companion app which can assess the user’s health based on the indicated symptoms using its vast, A.I.-based database.

Sensely — The virtual medical assistant named Molly can assess the patient’s symptoms using speech, text, images, and video. As the user wishes, it can use text or speech to communicate. Based on the gathered data as well as the information fed to its smart algorithm, Sensely interprets the user’s symptoms and recommends a diagnosis.

Buoy Health — The chatbot thoroughly asks you about the details of your medical state and offers you various solutions and actionable steps to take.

Infermedica — leverages machine learning technology to power the symptom-checker chatbot, Symptomate. The platform runs online and on mobile phones as a chatbot or voice-based application. It assesses the user’s health status and based on the symptoms.

GYANT — is a health chatbot that asks patients to understand their symptoms and then sends the data to doctors, who provide diagnoses and prescribe medicine in real-time. The service is available on Facebook Messenger or Alexa, but the team plans to release it on every messaging platform soon.

Cancer Chatbot — It is a helpful resource for cancer patients, caregivers, friends, and family on Facebook Messenger. The chatbot offers plenty of resources for patients from chemo tips and tricks to free services. It provides resources for caregivers to ease the burden of caring and making their lives easier.

User Stories

Conversation of Kavita with Healia’s Voice UI through a phone

Conversation of Kavita with Healia’s Conversational UI through Facebook Messenger

Conclusions and Learnings

This exercise was different. The users of this chatbot are special and knowing more about the challenges faced by this set of users only motivated me to come up with some reasonable solution. My respect to the women who are fighting these issues and staying strong!

This chatbot — Healia, although this is just an exploration of possibilities, the work that was put in to while gathering information helped me gauge the user’s circumstances and widened my perspective and knowledge from a scientific point of view.

Be there a chance to connect, I would be happy to get in touch! 🤝

Radhakrishna Aekbote, UX Design | UX Research | Product | Mentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/

Designing a chatbot for women’s health for India was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

🌥 Backdrop…

The banking sector has historically been a monopoly, with the world’s biggest
institutions maintaining a relatively unchallenged hegemony. Many of the market leaders, including the likes of JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, have roots going back more than 150 years, and market capitalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.

Online banking has become a familiar part of our daily lives. No longer do people need to go to the bank to tend their banking activities or have to call the telephone number of the bank to do telephone banking. However, these methods of banking still exist.

Traditional brick-and-mortar banks introduced customers to digital channels
without really pressing home their advantages. Although mobile banking
has been available for the best part of a decade, the apps offered by high
street banks have been hampered by poor functionality and security
concerns.

With the rise of acceptance of NeoBank internationally, I picked up this subject to learn and present my interpretation of the banking systems eccentric to the everyday user in India, for India. Most of us here have more than one bank account, and, any two bank accounts are not the same however could be similar. As a professional, I have had my experiences working with financial institutions and banks (investment banks, corporate banks) before my UX case study on NeoBanks, so I think having a background helped!

🥅 The Goal…

To design a NeoBanking app for India that provides end-to-end banking and financial service to customers with multiple bank accounts, simplifying banking and is a single destination for all banking operations and more.

🎯 The Scope…

To create a banking system fundamentally different from traditional banks,
providing, linking of multiple bank accounts, hassle-free account creation,
seamless payments, smart reporting, user-friendly interface and
more under a single mobile app.

🚠 High-Level Objectives

• To create a type of direct bank that is 100% digital and
  reaches users on mobile apps.
• To digitally reinvent the practices and processes associated
  with traditional banking.
• To create a userfriendly banking user interface to improve
  the experience of both parties.
• To host a safe financial environment.

Later, while creating a strategy, you will see how these high-level objectives got translated to a meticulous user-centric winning formula.

🪂 The Case Study journey

🔬Research

📈 Market Research / Secondary Research

People’s trust in Banks decreasing? 😎 → 😮🕶🤏🏼

The results of a YouGov (a British international Internet-based market research and data analytics firm) survey conducted in 2017 tells the story of individual's trust in their banks.

Just 37% of the individuals in Italy, and 27% in France stated they trust their bank.

27% of people in Japan think banks act in the best interests of their customers

People in emerging markets and developing countries like Thailand, the banks have managed to hold the trust of individuals with a percentage close to 90.

Thus, In recent years, the approach to financial regulation has opened the sector up to the greater competition. This has allowed neobanks, which are institutions without physical branches where customers organize their finances entirely via digital channels, to thrive. Neo Banks are reinventing the practices and processes associated with traditional banking.

🥇 So, what is a Neobank?

A Bank That Is 100% Digital And Reaches Customers On Mobile Apps And Personal Computer Platforms Only.

(They don’t have their own bank license but use partners to offer bank-licensed services. Apps that facilitate the administration of accounts and credit cards are typical neobanks they rely on customers having an account with an underlying bank with a corresponding bank license but offer a user-friendly interface. The extent to which customers are aware of the underlying bank relationship day to day may vary.)

Examples: Yolt (ING’s launch in the UK retail banking market), Lunarway, Webank (Tencent, the company behind China’s most popular social l media platform WeChat), Moven.

🥈 What about Challenger Banks then?

A modern form of banks to challenge NeoBanks, but owned by traditional banks.

(Challenger banks are similar to NeoBanks. They are a modernized form of a traditional bank, which functions without physical offices or branches. Have their own bank license, hence, have the right to offer banking service.)

Example: Kotak 811, YONO SBI, Yolt

📊 Statistics for Neobanks and Challenger banks

The research study by HTF Marketing Report provides forecasts for Neo and Challenger Bank investments till 2022.

The rate of return expected for money invested on NeoBanks is to grow more than 12 times from its beginning balance to its ending balance.

Continental Breakup of VC Funding, 2019

🎶 Ching-Ching, Bling-Bling! 💵 💶 💷 💴

Neo Banks & Challenger Banks In India 🇮🇳

With open banking emerging in India, fintech, and banks collaborating at various wavelengths, and the RBI focusing on digitalization and financial inclusion, neo banks have started to make their presence felt.

🤼‍♂️ Competition Benchmarking

Taken into account both Indian🇮🇳 (Kotak 811, Open, Yono SBI)and overseas (Lunarway 🇩🇰, Xinja 🇦🇺, Monzo 🇬🇧, Yolt🇬🇧) neobanks and challenger banks.

👥 Stakeholder Analysis

Created using ‘Miro’, a mind mapping for a user and his dependence on a bank.

👤 User Persona Exploration

The target audience for my research was mainly people between ages of 24–40 with jobs, businesses, and even entrepreneurs. For all these users have a different financial pattern and also this age range dominated the digital financial footprint.

During my research, I managed to interview 7 individuals from different backgrounds and from different tier of cities as well. Apart from the 7 individuals, I managed to speak to a few more on their financial handlings but off-record, however, this exercise added useful insights while creating personas.

🎙 User Interviews

Blurring the names of the interview participants, as promised.

Participant #1 (Salaried, Manager)

Participant #2 (Salaried, Consultant)

Participant #3 (Salaried, Analyst)

Participant #4 (Artist, Entrepreneur)

Participant #5 (Salaried, Stock Markets)

Participant #6 (Salaried, Specialist)

Participant #7 (Businessman)

Some quantified data from the interviews. I agree 7 is a small number and a small sample set cannot represent the entire age range of 24–40. However, the insights gained were interesting.

Along with these interviews, I have had conversations with a few people I meet every day. Asking them about their experiences with banks, applications, investment, and money tracking. This helped dilute the inclination of the 7 users whom I interviewed.

🌏 The Banking Ecosystem, from the eyes of the user…

A user through his/her bank account is linked with his/ her financial data which is kept safe under the assurance of the bank. The banking industry has evolved from being paper-based to becoming paperless.

It is also a known fact that until recent times banking with its policies was only an option for the affluent. Times have changed and so has banking, becoming more appealable to any commoner and very recently to the underprivileged.

And thus, attracting both Businesses and Personal banking, the banking ecosystem today is not only bound to websites, apps on laptops or mobiles but still exist in the physical form being the branch office itself. Adding to that, checkbooks, passbooks, challans, acknowledgments, ATM receipts, certain onboarding procedures, and more still exist on a paper form. An active user, who uses bank accounts frequently with time only develops more such data in physical or digital forms. Hence, leaving the banking ecosystem with loose ends.

The challenge here is to understand the processes involved in the physical ecosystem and to create seamless experiences between the digital and physical world and between different software.

🎭 Current User Journeys, based on the interviews

The 7 participants were given 6 different scenarios with each scenario, the views and opinions of the users for each task were made a note and were gauged based on averages for each task. So, the most common thing-to-do were broken down into tasks and sub-tasks. Any extra or different point of view by the participant was later grouped respectively with the most inclined task.

That completes the research part of this study, however, this is just a selection of the best available information from my research scrapbook. For detailed research on the previous sections, I have maintained a document that I am sharing here. Feel free to visit Secondary Research.doc

😕 Some common pain-points

• Lack of transparency between banking Policies and norms, awareness of bank account features. Vocabulary used is not simple.

• Lack of user interest and time to learn or get used to banking on applications or visiting physical banks. Banking pictures a complex image for most users. Technology shyness.
• Multiple bank account creates multiple Banking credentials, thus, is challenging to the user memory. Users go to multiple destinations For various financial operations be it A bank, branch, app, website.
• It takes 7 septs on a website and 8 minutes On average to block bank offer calls which bug the user several times a day. People from India, do you get annoying advertisement calls from your banks when you’re in the middle of something important?

💡 Strategy

After the research, it was time I revisited my objectives with this study. This was for me, a very exciting phase of this study as I got a chance to reflect on my research findings. The perspective gained, things changed, objectives were reinforced — for good!

• Keep banking simple, vocabulary simpler, accessibility simplest! 🚨
• Help user take a pulse of his/her existing loans, assets, investments, liabilities. Provide insights so the user gets more confident and makes a proper judgment.
• Track the user’s everyday expenses, including the smallest of all the expenses. Categorize them into groups and give a visual representation of the same.
• Users having 1 or more bank accounts should be able to access, transfer, receive, encash a cheque, track status, know more about their accounts and offers — all under one application. This looks overwhelming, but the sign-up process must be seamless and easy.
• Users must be able to create their goals and saving to achieve the goals should be encouraged by the application. The user will be able to give access to his created goals to whomsoever he wishes to, be it a friend, parents, children, wife, sibling, mentor. The goals will have a social touch, wherein the looped people will be able to react, comment, and advise on goals.
• Payments. Paying bills. Splitting bills.
• Learning must be promoted. Socialize goals.

📻 Storyboarding

I know adding images causes like the ones below hampers readability, these are just scenarios that I will mention in each of the captions.

Picture 1 (left), Picture 2 (right)

Picture 3 (left), Picture 4 (right)

🤔 ‘How Might We’ statements

1. How might we help the user sort their banking portfolio because he /
   she is prone to have their financial data in different forms?
2. How might we reinvent the practices and processes with traditional
   banking?
3. How might we make users aware of their bank account features
   because the majority of users are unaware of the same.
4. How might we unify & provide access to the user's multiple Bank
   accounts which are linked with loans, EMI’s, savings, Investments, etc.
   because the current user has different destinations to perform
   respective tasks.
5. How might we provide a timeline to users towards the fulfillment of
   his/her financial goals?
6. How might we create access to basic banking i.e. live interest rates,
   FD & RD plans, cheque encashment, passbook, request checkbook,
   etc.
7. How might we make tracking of expenses effortless and smart?
8. How might we host a safe financial environment for the users?
9. How might we create a dashboard for the user to make aware
   the user of his/her banking goals? Dashboard of Loans,
   SIP’s, Savings, etc.
10. How might we educate the user on finance, savings, investments, tax filings, etc.,

🎨 Proposed touch-points

Iterations of the proposed solutions for the pain points, journeys, stories told above. Here, I have tried to illustrate with abstract elements where I introduce a solution to its problem.

Digital Cheque Encashments, translating traditional experience to digital-only.

Getting more aware of your bank and bank accounts, awareness about bank account features. Below is a scenario where a user wants to know the best rate of interest for his to park lumpsum amount.

Overall experience about banking, this summarises most of the pain-points, meeting its solution. A clean, on-point, seamless banking application...

Moral objectives of the proposed application. Learning, education, accreditation the learning, keeping the way the app deals with security transparent and open and modest. The user’s trust is important, hence, not hiding anything under the carpet.

🏗 Information Architecture

As an iterative process, the scope of the application was measured with the information architecture shown below. The application, had to perform four distinct and important functionalities i.e., Linking of accounts (all that a bank app can do, this too should), User Goal Settings, Quick Money Transfers, Moral and Community aspects of financial education. These helped me define the primary navigations of the application and connect the secondary navigations to primary navigations and lesser important routes.

👨🏻‍💻 Design

Phew, finally! After all the juggle and struggle I was relieved to reach the Design stage of this product. Oh wait, this is the first time I called the product a product :)

Designing, for me, means freedom and responsibility. After all the thinking phases, I was hoping I could create something reasonable.

🥁 Bankkit — I named my product before I dived into the design. Why Bankkit? Cause there are two ways you can look at this, and both of them convinced me.

1. Bankkit — A banking kit, Bank-kit 😅
2. Bankkit — referring to Nike’s famous advert lines ‘Just Do It’. Just Bank it 😅😅

As a practice, I started off with creating paper wireframes.

✍🏼 Paper Wireframes

Grey-scale wireframes next!

💻 Greyscale Wireframes

📌 Usecase 1: Sign-up and Onboarding

At the outset, the proposed sign-up process. A seamless, transparent, and simple onboarding. Here, the user, i.e. Vivian:

• Screen 1: Opens the application.
• Screen 2: Registers his email for sign-up.
• Screen 3: Validates his mobile number with OTP.
• Screen 4: The app fetches a list of bank accounts associated with the number. Both debit and credit.

• Screen 4: Vivian now decides and selects the bank accounts he wants to link with the application.

Both credit and debit. Selected accounts: HDFC, ICICI, AXIS, SBI, and SBI Credit. Vivian excludes CITI bank.

By a long press on the tiles, the user should be able to prioritize the order of bank accounts. Say, HDFC Bank which is his salaried account and the most used account gets the first priority.

• Screen 5: After selecting the bank accounts, Vivian gets to choose what would he like to see on his banking dashboard from the selected accounts.

For example, on the screen below:

For HDFC Debit Account, Vivian selects savings, loans, and SIPs. Excludes and excludes investment.

Similarly, for ICICI Debit Account, Vivian selects savings and investments but excludes SIPs and Loans.

Likewise, for AXIS and SBI Debit accounts, Vivian only selects Savings. And only EMI’s for his SBI Credit card.

This sets up his dashboard.

• Screen 6: The HOME screen. Based on the priority selected, the accounts will be reflected in the shape of cards, with their balance shown upfront along with other highlights of the account.

For example, in the first account i.e. HDFC bank, the current balance is INR 40,000. Along with the balance, the interest rate being applied i.e. 4.92% is also being shown. Both, dynamic. Towards the left corner of the card, some icons are being shown:

🌎 The Globe Icon: Indicating it's an international account.

📈 The Line Graph Icon: Indicating there are investments associated with this (HDFC) account.

The short-text ‘LN’: Indicates the active loans in the account.

🐖 The Piggy-Bank Icon: Indicates saving instruments like Fixed Deposit and Recurring Deposit being associated with HDFC bank.

Along with it, the card credentials, expiry date, and registered name for the account holder are also shown.

📌 Usecase 2: Navigating from the Home screen to the detailed page of the application. Also, navigating to the Expenses and Transaction sections of the application.

• Screen 1 here is the Home screen, which is explained in the previous use case.
• Screen 2: This is the detailed page of a particular bank account. Vivian, our user here has selected HDFC Bank from the Home screen, which directs him to the detailed page of the HDFC account. An important feature here is, on swiping left or right, the application switches from one bank account to another. Making accessibility easy and fun.

The CVV is kept hidden, for security reasons with the help of a toggle button. Interacting with the toggle should ask for a password or fingerprint validation of the user, and, only then display the CVV.

The first section of the detailed page, the income versus expense tile. Gives an overall credit versus debit numeric overview. Followed is an action button, called, ‘Expense Report’. The expense report is in continuation o the credit versus expense tile.

Below the Income vs Expense, section is the crucial ‘banking’ section, where the most becoming navigations of a banking app are defined.

Traits: Account information, features, characteristics, limits, free transactions, transfer limits, international rates, etc., fall under the umbrella of traits.

Banking: Passbook, e-statements, cheque encashments, cheque encashment status, hotlisting a card, blocking bank offer calls, etc., are grouped under banking.

Apply for: Loans, Internation cards, EMIs, Passbook, Chequebook, Debit Card, Priority cards, etc., fall under the ‘Apply for’ category.

Offers: For business reasons and user’s interest, dedicated navigation for offers related to the bank account, card, and internet banking are clubbed together, categorized based on the nature of the application, and then shown in form of a filtered list with active filters.

Below these four crucial navigations, the dashboard button should take Vivian to a visual representation of the banking goals and personal goals.

Finally, the last section on the Detailed page (screen 2) is about the most recent transactions.

• Screen 3: On clicking the ‘Expense Report’ button, Vivian is navigated to the expense page, which is divided into two halves.

The first half is for the ‘monthly credit v monthly expense’ bar graph, live comparison. With filters to change the period range from 1 month to desired months. By default, it measures the past 6 months. Another filter here is the account filter, Vivian can include and exclude linked accounts and watch them in the same dashboard.

The second half of the screen is dedicated to ‘monthly’ expenses only. By default, it shows the categorized spending of the current month. But on the selection of a particular bar graph from the first half of the screen, the user should be able to see expenses based on the selected month. The categories in the second half are kept on-point and minimal. The expense categories include household, travel, health/fitness, food, saved/invested sum, and cash withdrawals.

• Screen 4: On clicking the ‘Transactions’ tab from screen 3 and the ‘View Transactions’ button from screen 2, the user is navigated to a list of recent transactions with the same filters, i.e., account and period. Here, the user gets to download his statement or passbook.

📌 Usecase 3: The Banking Dashboard and User Goals

• Screen 1: Again, this is the detailed page of the bank account (HDFC). On clicking the ‘Dashboard’.
• Screen 2: Vivian is now navigated to the ‘Dashboard’ screen which comprises two tabs they are:

1. Banking Goals, which consist of an overview of Loans, Savings (FD’s, RD’s, and more), Investments. Each type separated by cards, and each card having 3 carousels.

The first carousel is the graphical representation/information design.

The second carousel is more to the table (row and column) with quantified numbers.

The third carousel is again the summary with both, numbers and micro charts.

2. The User Goals, Personal Goals Tab, Create Goals. Here, our user, Vivian, can create a personal goal, set a timeline, and start saving for the particular goal. The goals can be anything, a Europe trip you’ve been planning for or that cool camera which you’ve been thinking of saving for.

The highlighted part is a goal created by the user. These are shown with cards and carousels withing cards.

The first carousel: The first card here, the user has created a goal to buy a camera. The micro-chart here shows the progress of the goal and a timeline, and where is the goal in today’s gauge. Along with the remaining period, it also shows the monthly saving contributed towards saving for buying a camera. The icons below, i.e. the like, comment, and share icons are the social part of these goals. The user can add, remove people from a particular goal.

The second carousel: The second goal, i.e., the Europe trip, the social side of this goal is shown where the user is able to see, like, delete, reply to comments and reactions.

• Screen 4: On clicking the cards, the user is navigated to a much detailed screen of the goal.

📌 Usecase 4: Money Transfers, Bills, Splitting of bills

📌 Usecase 5: Core Banking

Screen 2: Traits: Account information, features, characteristics, limits, free transactions, transfer limits, international rates, etc., fall under the umbrella of traits.

Screen 3: Banking: Passbook, e-statements, cheque encashments, cheque encashment status, hotlisting a card, blocking bank offer calls, etc., are grouped under banking.

Apply for: Loans, Internation cards, EMIs, Passbook, Chequebook, Debit Card, Priority cards, etc., fall under the ‘Apply for’ category.

Screen 4: Offers: For business reasons and user’s interest, dedicated navigation for offers related to the bank account, card, and internet banking are clubbed together, categorized based on the nature of the application, and then shown in form of a filtered list with active filters.

🧭 Bottom Navigation Bar

🧑🏻‍🎨 Visual Design

🎩 Brand Statement

Bankkit is a NeoBank that provides banking & financial services to
customers with multiple bank accounts in an entangled financial
environment. Helping them sort their bank account & traits/features that
comes with it, which in turn will aim at creating a single destination/platform for all banking operations.

🦾 Application Characteristics

🏁 Conclusions and Learnings

This case study was performed some time ago but uploaded on Medium only in April 2021. Although, most of the data still is relevant and the statistics showed cover up to the year 2025 in predictive cases.

For me, this case study was intense and challenging. Although I downloaded the NeoBank application of different countries, I was unable to sign-up or login. Nor was I allowed to take a tour of the application, as the banks had a strong regulatory commitment to the respective financial regulatory authorities of their jurisdiction.

Since I couldn’t refer or get inspired by their ideas, I only got a chance to skim through their websites, articles, and videos about them. This made the case study exciting as I got a chance to start from scratch and this helped me add up to my knowledge of a typical Indian bank user, the Indian banking regulations, Global banking scenario, and a lot more exploration towards the future of banking with a pulse of current trends within the banking sector. Although I had experience working with financial institutes, FinTechs, and more as my full-time job, this case study not only gave a chance for me to explore an entirely new topic but also handed me an open opportunity to exercise and practice my user experience skill-sets.

At the outset of the interviews that were conducted, I was quite skeptical as to whether the participants would be comfortable sharing their money handling and financial details, however, as I proceeded, I found that the participants are more than happy to answer the ‘right’ questions. The first rounds of interviews made me revisit my scrapbooks and pushed me to improvise.

Well, in the end, what is user experience without a user! 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Be there a chance to connect, I would be happy to get in touch! 🤝

Radhakrishna Aekbote, UX Design | UX Research | Product | Mentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/

Case study: your pocket bank kit was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.