Fintech is a modern approach that is revolutionizing the banking industry. Over 64% of consumers use a Fintech platform to transact globally. Thus, many banks strive to offer good products to attract users and generate more revenue. Most of them offer apps that simplify service delivery today.
Therefore, developing an efficient banking app design that satisfies your customers is important. No one wants to use a poorly designed product in this digital age.
Still, the market is highly competitive, and most Fintech companies face difficulties. A good way out is the design thinking approach that helps companies to solve usability challenges. It also allows customers to get products that meet their needs.
This article discusses the significance of design thinking and how it increases the chances of product success.
Source: Unsplash
What Is Design Thinking?
Design thinking focuses primarily on what the customer needs. It is a process that uses a problem-solving approach to create user-friendly products. The process depends on observation, empathy, and user behavior to create innovative products.
You must interact with the consumer on the ground; get to know their issues and the services they expect. For every Fintech company owner, the competition is high, and users can easily move to other products. Thus, the design thinking approach ensures direct communication with the consumers. After getting the required information, you can embark on creating suitable solutions.
Moreover, this approach helps you develop appealing products with exceptional UX designs. So, design thinking is an intentional strategy that aims to solve customers’ problems with innovative approaches and techniques. Let us briefly examine the steps involved in the design process.
Empathize
In this initial stage, you must gather relevant information about the customers. You should also understand the company’s objectives. Your aim is to identify the customer’s pain points, needs, and expectations. Stepping into the customer’s shoes gives you more clarity about the anticipated product.
Define
You need to evaluate the information collected during the research at this phase. The main reason is to identify the core issues and find valuable solutions. So, ensure you analyze the data to arrive at specific customer needs and insights.
Ideate
In this stage, you must develop relevant ideas to solve the users’ problems. The team should brainstorm and create potential proposals for the perfect solutions before proceeding to the next phase.
Prototype
After reviewing the best solutions, the team develops prototypes based on user research and business goals. Your UI/UX designers should build interactive prototypes, allowing users to get the real feel of the product.
Test
The last stage entails usability testing of the prototype to determine its functionality. How do users interact with the product? Does it offer the required solutions? You must then gather customer feedback to guide you in improving the product.
Source: Unsplash
How Design Thinking Increases Project Success
So, how can design thinking help you improve the success of your projects? First, you should hire competent experts who can align design principles with the user needs and your company’s goals.
Since your primary goal is to satisfy customers, ensure you use the design thinking approach for optimal results. Here are ways to apply design thinking and increase the likelihood of project success:
Understand Customer Needs
You will properly understand your customer’s needs when you think through the design process. Apart from learning more about their problems, you will be able to understand their expectations.
You will get first-hand information if you empathize with the target audience. The users will share their problems, expectations, and preferences. Thus, understanding the customers deeper will help you develop the right solutions to enhance service delivery.
Identify Specific Problems
Identifying the specific problems that a customer faces is essential in UX design. It helps a Fintech company to develop goal-driven products. For instance, if customers face a challenge in saving cash daily, you can create an app to help them manage finances efficiently by advising on investment options or reasonable spending limits. Remember, developing products that solve specific issues results in higher product adoption and better sales.
Encourage Innovation
Design thinking allows UI/UX experts to think outside the box at the ideation stage. Designers brainstorm and present creative, innovative solutions to solve complicated problems. There is no limit to the idea diversity as long as they are based on the predefined scope of user issues.
Adopt an Agile Approach
User experience design is a field that follows agile principles of satisfying customers, collaboration, and embracing change. Design thinking in Fintech is not an exception when it comes to agility. From the empathizing phase to testing the product, the design team works in unison to deliver impeccable experiences to the customer.
Reduce Risks
Fintech companies that choose the design thinking path in the initial phases of product design lower the risks of failure. Having a customer-focused approach helps you to design suitable products. Besides, you can easily detect problems with the design before proceeding further into the development process. It saves time and resources you would have used to rectify the problems.
Improve Products
After usability testing, customers often leave feedback about the product’s functionality and if it met their expectations. So, UX experts often use the information to introduce changes and improve the product.
Enhance Communication
When you make it your goal to understand consumer needs, it is easy to maintain healthy engagement with the customers. Thus, design thinking enhances communication between the company’s stakeholders and its clients. Moreover, collaboration with the entire design team helps to improve work relations and foster trust among the members.
Conclusion
The design thinking practice is vital in the Fintech industry. It gives Fintech companies deeper insight into customer needs. It also allows the companies to develop suitable solutions to address their target audience’s expectations and pain points. Ultimately, the financial institutions deliver software solutions that add value while offering impeccable user experiences.
Fintech companies can also follow the design process to attract customers and generate high sales revenue. So, the design process increases the product’s success since the customers will be happy and satisfied with the services.
