Jun 20, 2013 11:50 AM

Banks need to focus on user experience says IDEO design director Anne Pascual

Anne Pascual is a design director at IDEO, Munich. In addition to her role at the design and innovation consultancy she speaks about early stage innovation, user experience design, design research and much more. She will be speaking at Wired Money on 1 July.

Wired.co.uk: What does design have to do with finance, money and banking?

Anne Pascual: Finance, money and banking are a part of daily life, amongst many other things we all need to juggle and balance, which can often create tensions and friction. Whether we like it or not, we constantly need to make decisions. With regards to money, those decisions are mostly about value exchange. Dealing with this on a day-to-day basis is complex, and design can help solve many associated pain points and challenges. That said, I believe design can not only enable people to handle their finances in an easier way -- but also lessen the time they spend dealing with money so they can focus instead on the things they really care about.

If you look at the disruptors of the industry, their focus on user experience has been a critical competitive advantage KeepInline]

[b]Is this an area where the sector has traditionally fallen down?[/b]

Financial institutions traditionally have been focused on performance to establish their reputation, from performance of financial transactions to performance of financial products. This value proposition hasn't radically changed much over time. Take risk life insurance as an example. When invented 150 years ago, it was a pretty innovative idea. But today, a 30-year life insurance policy is not adapting to or solving peoples' needs in today's economy who might move to different countries and change jobs more frequently.

Additionally, the vast majority of financial institutions have been built and optimised around products and individual channels, not around holistic user experiences. This is where technology has a role to play. If you look at the disruptors of the industry, their focus on user experience -- enabled by data and technology -- has been a critical competitive advantage.

[b]In an ideal world would a company like IDEO be irrelevant? Shouldn't all businesses have an understanding of design?[/b]

To me, design is an approach for dealing with complexity. In today's unpredictable world, it's in everyone's interest that more and more people and businesses leverage design to deal with the unknown, to understand how to learn and experiment (including interpreting customer feedback) and to create unique experiences that delight people -- which is not a trivial thing. There is no single recipe on how to do it.

When working with organisations, large and small, I've seen IDEO's role as an amplifier, catalyst and accelerator of innovation, enabling organisations to gain an understanding of design and make it a core competence by building and launching new, meaningful products and services. That's positive impact.

Because of constant change in the world, whether driven by business, technology or consumer behaviours, I'd argue that design may even become a more important skill and mind-set in the future.

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**You specialise in user experience in the digital space.

Are we still learning how to best engage users digitally?** New behaviours keep emerging through new technologies, and vice versa, as has always been the case. This is an ongoing source of inspiration for me personally and for the design teams at IDEO.

I do think that solving a real problem means focusing on engagement. Turning a problem into a pleasant, delightful and maybe even rewarding experience is a pretty complex task, which we at IDEO tend to approach through continuous iteration and prototyping.

Prototyping helps prove your assumptions about new behaviours you want to enable have been right. Digital technology makes you learn much faster from people's behaviours -- what works and what doesn't when designing a novel user experience. So many times, we like to confuse technology with the solution, but many times it's simply the tool providing the options that create new value.

What areas surrounding money do you see as ripe for disruption?

Most "classic" areas surrounding money have been recently questioned and are being reassembled, such as budgeting, saving, lending, investing, payment and insurance. We are seeing new types of bank appear, as well as new currencies -- which is quite exciting. In addition, I'd keep looking out for three things: game changers, "human financials" and banks as platforms:

First, game changers. If you start considering and designing around the social nature of value systems, you may see how new dynamics will disrupt established markets and landscapes. Look at

Kickstarter or Kiva, for instance, or any examples of collaborative consumption or skill sharing.

Second, human financials. This to me is about addressing and leveraging behavioural economics when dealing with money.

Finally, banks as platforms. Once banks see themselves operating as platforms that serve not only end consumers but third party service providers, they may be able to scale their impact and business in new ways. Amazon, but really any service with an API, is thinking and operating in that way.

Anne Pascual will be appearing at <span class="s1">Wired Money, on 1 July, 2013. Tickets are on sale now: see <span class="s1">wired.co.uk/money13 for a full speaker list and further information. Wired subscribers receive a 10 percent discount.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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