About U.S. Bank Singlepoint
U.S. Bank Singlepoint provides a digital treasury management platform enabling finance teams to optimize working capital anytime, from anywhere by monitoring account activity, transferring and managing money, sending payments, preventing fraud and securing access to legitimate personnel.
In short, SinglePoint enables you to manage your company's cash for:
Payment disbursements
Receivables tracking
Investment options
Analysis tools
Fraud monitoring
Access restriction (Security)
The Opportunity
Launched in 2005, SinglePoint maintained high client trust and satisfaction year over year. The platform met market demand for small and large businesses seeking a cash management system; however, as user demands and product initiatives expanded over time, the platform could not deliver.
Dated design compared to competitors
Bloated feature set over time
Inefficient navigation hierarchy
Decade + technology debt
Not flexible to meet modern demands
No longer a simple, easy to use platform
“Singlepoint lacked a design vision.”
Project Timeline & Resources
57
Weeks
6
Design Staff
25+
Client Staff
My Responsibilities
Client relationship and status
Research strategy & implementation
Workshop facilitation
Design strategy & implementation
2
Design Systems
Tools
Axure
Optimal Sort
Sketch
Zeplin
Zoom
Discovery Research
The Discovery research laid the foundation to understand the current user experience, user goals, needs, and gaps.
Interviews were conducted with:
Executive Stakeholders
Internal employees (e.g., HelpDesk, Product, IT, and Training)
External Singlepoint users.
7
Stakeholder Interviews
12
Internal Employee Interviews
30
External Contextual Inquiries
3
User Personas Identified
Persona Development
The Discovery research data on behaviors, goals, and tasks enabled me to identify 3 foundational Personas.
Alignment Workshop
I led several workshops to share the research completed and facilitated ideation sessions for design and technology solutions:
Discovery research presentation
Persona presentation
Design exercises
Unmoderated Card Sorting study
Ideation sessions
Feature mapping and prioritization
Design System considerations
These events took place over the course of several weeks and resulted in a clear plan for sprint assignments and concept explorations.
-
Empathy Exericise
A modified Cognitive Walkthrough designed to enable the team to feel the user experience (both positive and negative).
-
Unmoderated Card Sort Study
The study focused on revealing hierarchical groupings to establish the navigation and information architecture of the platform.
-
Design System Review
The platform adopted a Design System from a prior U.S. Bank Investment platform. An inventory was done to determine reusable or net new components needed for this design.
-
Feature Map & Prioritization / Sprint Plan
The features required by the platform were identified and prioritized resulting in a Sprint execution plan.
Concepts & Wireframes
One of the biggest challenges was designing the dashboard. The technology group strongly desired one dashboard to reduce development effort and maintenance; however, the research clearly showed specific goals, needs, and tasks for each Persona. But there were overlapping tasks. This divide inhibited progress on dashboard concepts.
I decided to focus on the “Bob” Persona which represents approximately 70% of the users. This enabled the team to move forward, flesh out this dashboard and settle the remaining dashboards in subsequent sprints.
Note: The Executive Sponsor for the project was thrilled and although the Bob concepts were still unproven, he presented them at a board meeting to showcase the improvements already made and the shared enthusiasm.
Usability Testing - Prototype
Test Plan
I created to following documents to define the scope of the research; the user segments needed; and identify and created the set of questions and tasks to be asked during testing to establish a consistent evaluation structure :
Recruitment Criteria & Schedule
Usability Test Plan
Usability Test Script
Usability Test & Findings
Concepts Tested:
The concepts were translated into Wireframes which quickly became a comprehensive prototype.
The prototype leveraged as much of the existing Design System components as possible for consistency and reuse. Prototype.
A usability test was conducted evaluatingconcepts for each Persona type. The results were summarized in a condensed findings document outlining the refinements needed and the severity/priority of the test findings.
10
Participants
7
Companies
“This is jumping ahead 30 years from today’s experience. It’s already friendlier.”
Design Delivery
At the conclusion of the project, the Dashboards for each Persona (Alicia, Bob, and Linda) were very well received and even showcased at Trade Show events using the interactive prototype. Below are the Dashboards and Mobile design.
Samples of Delivered Screens
Alicia Dashboard
Bob Dashboard
Linda Dashboard
Account View on Dashboard
Accounts Page
Individual Account Page
Search for an Account
Exceptions (Fraud)
User Preferences
Payments Page
Reports Page
Promotional Video
After completion of this project, U.S. Bank created a promotional video for the new Singlepoint platform. The Persona resonated so much with the client that they included the theme into the video and the the video elements were abstracted from wireframes I provided to the bank.