9 common UX misconceptions in fintech
User experience design matters enormously in fintech, yet a handful of stubborn misconceptions still make it hard for fintech products to attract users and keep them.
1. The design has to be unique and innovative
UX design should keep evolving to meet user needs that are increasingly diverse and constantly changing. People want products that work better, are easier to use, and fit more conveniently into their lives. So UX design has to stay focused on users and give them an experience that is genuinely great and noticeably different from competing products.
We can all see banks and fintech startups chasing innovation, competing with each other on the latest design solutions and technologies. The capabilities of new technology are astonishing, but adopting it in your product does not guarantee a flawless user experience.
Most everyday users have neither the time nor the desire to learn new technology, and many get frustrated when a feature they use daily suddenly behaves in unfamiliar, unexpected ways. New technology should be applied where it fits and where it benefits users, making it easier for them to solve their own problems.
That is why new designs and technologies should be rolled out gradually and strategically, without putting core features at risk. Most of the time you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You need to refine solutions that are already proven and familiar to users. Do that, and you can be confident that nobody will need a manual to use your service.
2. You only need to deliver exactly what was asked for
Successful UX design goes beyond executing the brief you were handed. It has to account for many other things that users and the business need.
In practice, a good product meets users' needs and expectations and also delivers on the company's business goals. A UX designer needs to understand the product's business model, its marketing strategy, and the context of use. Who are the users? What are their problems and needs? This information gives the designer a clearer picture of what customers are trying to achieve, so the design can optimize the user experience while still serving the company's business goals.
The UX design process always runs from the top down, and understanding the product's business model also helps the designer make sound decisions that fit the company's strategy. If a product relies on premium features that must be paid for to keep the company financially healthy, the designer has to make sure those features are designed so that users understand them and are willing to pay.
3. The more features, the happier the users
One of the most eye-opening experiences of my early career was joining a company in the middle of its digital transformation. My job was to design a job-search app that was packed with interesting features that had nothing to do with one another. Needless to say, the project failed. The investors ran out of money, the development team lacked both the capacity and the skills, and users were disappointed because the app was neither appealing nor useful to them.
More features do not mean happier users, because features bring problems of their own. It is worth reading up on the concept of the Minimal Viable Product. Before starting a project, it is essential to understand which core functions customers ask for and use the most.
First, when there are too many features, users get confused and struggle to use your product. That leads to frustration and erodes their trust in it.
Second, too many features can make your product slower and harder to use. If it takes too many steps to accomplish one specific goal, users feel their time is being wasted.
Finally, piling on features makes your product more complicated and harder to understand. If it isn't simple and easy to use, people may not want to use it at all and will move on to something else.
So instead of adding as many features as possible, focus on making sure each feature is meaningful and useful. Pay attention to how people actually interact with your product, and design it to serve their basic needs as well as it possibly can.
4. UX design should rely on quantitative data alone
There is no question that design driven by quantitative data is an extremely promising approach in the product world, and in finance in particular. Its advantages are obvious: design solutions backed by statistics, measurable outcomes for design decisions and experiments, and a clear way to pick the best option.
At its core, this is a scientific, metrics-based system aimed at maximizing conversion and measuring effectiveness. Its motto: no random moves, no gut-feel solutions, only design proven by numbers. For a manager at any financial institution, using data as the basis for rolling out a design solution is a perfectly reasonable way to work.
Quantitative data can tell you about usage levels and user behavior in the product, which helps you make sensible design decisions and evaluate how the product is performing. What it cannot tell you is the whole story of what users think and feel while using it. Creating a good user experience takes a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, together with an understanding of users and the designer's own experience.
So you need both kinds of data to truly understand what users need and expect. You get there through methods such as interviews, surveys, polls, and directly observing people as they use the product.
Using quantitative and qualitative data together is how you create a good user experience, one that meets users' needs and delivers value to the business.
5. Financial experts know exactly what their users want
In reality, your users are usually very different from what you imagine. Being a financial expert does not guarantee knowing exactly what users want. Financial experts may have information about the market, trends, and customer data, but they cannot stand in for every user and every preference.
Financial experts are rational people who are always looking for the best solution, and they expect most users to approach financial services the same way. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Most people are fairly irrational. They make decisions and draw conclusions based on emotion and instinct, often unconsciously. Their behavior patterns frequently don't follow logic, and they act out of habit. This explains why so many people don't use a product the way its creators envisioned.
Building a product with a good experience takes several disciplines working together, including design, market research, product development, and finance. But to really understand user needs, direct contact with users and market research are essential. Financial experts can work with the product team to analyze customer and market data, but they cannot represent users or know precisely what users want.
To create a product with a good experience, then, you have to put users at the center of the design process and arrive at solutions that fit their needs and requirements through research and validation.
6. The easiest path to success - copy the design of popular products
A common misconception is that you can look at a successful service, copy it, and immediately achieve the same level of success. Blindly copying financial interfaces from a popular service is clearly not going to work.
Every product has its own requirements and characteristics, and copying another product's design does not guarantee that yours will meet them. What makes a product unique and successful comes down to a number of factors that go well beyond interface design. You need to understand exactly what sits behind that success. Some attempts at copying have genuinely succeeded. Look more closely, though, and you will find that the founders of those products discovered a niche, created a business model of their own, and invested serious effort in developing the product, moving from copying to creating.
The design of a digital product depends on more than its interface. It also involves how content is organized, page load speed, features, customer support, and so on. You need to analyze and account for everything that makes your business and your product unique and, ultimately, gives you a lasting competitive advantage. On top of that, the product needs a good user experience.
Of course, the interfaces of popular apps can be a source of inspiration and a good starting point. That can save time at the beginning of a design project, but interface design is only one part of user experience design. What matters is understanding the idea behind the design you are referencing, how it benefits users, and how it solves real business problems. That is how your service can become a new standard and something that helps millions of people in their daily lives.
7. UX design requires a big investment that only large companies can afford?
Fundamentally, user experience design is about increasing satisfaction and earning user loyalty by improving usability, usefulness, and the pleasure people get from interacting with a product. It applies to projects small and large, and to companies small and large. In fact, investing in UX can save costs, make you more competitive, and raise the quality of your product's experience.
That is why, when it comes to building digital financial services, combining UX design practice with Design Thinking is especially effective. A lean, streamlined UX process can deliver good results on a limited budget and timeline, which makes it a good fit for small companies with limited resources. UX design steps such as creating personas, user journey maps, and user testing can all be carried out by small teams or startups. In the long run, UX design brings a significant return on investment and strengthens the core capabilities of the development team.
For large companies, investing in UX can open up even more opportunities to improve their products, including more detailed user research, more data, and a stronger basis for raising product quality. The important thing is to recognize that investing in user experience is not a sunk cost. It is an investment in the product's future.
8. User experience is only about the product's interface
Many people think a product with a good experience simply means an app with a highly polished, attractive interface. But user experience involves many other things, including content, customer service, load speed, responsiveness, customer interaction, features, how the product is used, its reliability and safety, and more.
Content is an indispensable part of the user experience. It has to be optimized for its purpose and give users the information they need quickly and easily.
Customer service is another important part of the user experience. This is especially true in financial industries where customer service is integral to the offering, such as banking or insurance. Support teams should be trained to resolve customers' problems quickly and effectively.
How fast information loads and how responsive the product feels also shape the user experience. When a product loads slowly, users may not have the patience to wait and will switch to a competitor. Responsiveness needs to keep improving to meet what users expect.
So user experience is not just about the interface. Many other important factors come together to create the most complete and best possible experience, which in turn strengthens users' satisfaction with, and loyalty to, the product or service.
9. Design a good user experience and the product will succeed
User experience is one of the key factors in a product's success, but it is not the only one. Digital products often grow fast, yet they still have to obey the laws of the market. That means success depends not only on the quality of the product but also on how and when it is introduced to the market, which services it offers users, the competitors in the same space, the regulations the service has to operate under, and many other business factors.
UX design is also an iterative process, and it does not stop once the product launches. Going forward, the product has to be optimized and improved based on the data collected and on customer feedback.
A product also has to get things right on reasonable pricing, product quality, market access, an effective marketing strategy, and many other fronts. If a product has a good user experience but is priced too high or struggles to reach its market, it still won't succeed. For a product to succeed, it has to deliver on all of these business factors, not just the user experience.
