TD Bank: Transfer Feature
Overview
TD Bank is an American National Bank that is one of the largest banks in the US. TD Bank has a digital presence in online and mobile banking where it allows customers to access their banking accounts, pay bills, make deposits, and more. One of the most widely used online services by its customers is transferring money between internal and external accounts.
Problem
Customers are able to make internal transfers between their own TD Bank accounts through the mobile app. However, customers are not able to use that feature to make external transfers from their TD account to another financial institution through the mobile app.
Solution
Add an external money transfer feature to the current mobile application and add new screens for the external account add-on that seamlessly blends with the current UI design of the TD Bank mobile app.
Role
Research, UX, UI, Usability Testing, Prototype
Time
3 weeks
Date: 10/24/2022- 11/18/2022
Tools
Figma, Miro, Whimsical
Research
The research plan that I created was to learn more about the user’s overall experience when mobile banking and more specifically when performing money transfer transactions based on the user’s bank of their choice.
User Interviews
A total of 4 user interviews I conducted to gather qualitative data and learn about the process of users when performing banking transactions.
The main questions that I asked were:
Have you ever transferred money to someone else using a baking app?
If so, how was the experience and what would you change about it?
If not, what stopped you from doing so?
What features do you think would be convenient for you when mobile banking?
Based on these questions, I was able to get insight into how the users feel about their process in online banking.
A pattern that I found among participants was that they would prefer to perform any kind of transaction on their phone or online instead of having to visit a banking branch, as it takes most of their time. Also, they want clear steps when doing a transaction on the mobile app as it can be overwhelming not knowing how the banking system works.
Competitive Analysis
There’s many banking institutions that a user could bank with. I looked at the current largest banks and conducted a competitor analysis, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. I also did a comparison of their competitors that are in the market for providing money transfer services.
First-hand Customer Experience
As a TD Bank former teller, I had the opportunity to understand and resolve customers’ problems with their online banking. Many customers experience the inconvenience of lacking or having to find a computer to make immediate money transfers, as this feature is only available on the TD Bank online desktop version. Being that many users can do various transactions on the TD mobile banking app without the need of visiting a bank, I thought… why not include the external money transfer feature on the app as well?
Having to learn about customers’ needs first-hand, solidified my decision on adding this feature.
Defining the User
Provisional Personas
Based on the user interviews, I synthesized the results that assisted me in creating 3 personas that highlight their goals and pains based on their interests when processing money transfers from external banks.
User Flow
I created a user flow to show the pathway of how the 3 personas would go through the process of transferring money to an external account.
Design Solutions
Low & Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Since TD Bank mobile app has already a money transfer screen, I decided to add an “External Transfer” tab that seamlessly integrated with the other current money transfer service tabs. I also designed new screens for the addition of an external account that followed the TD Bank mobile UI.
Style Guide
Prototype
With the new addition of the external transfer feature to the wireframes, elements of the style guide were implemented in the high-fidelity screens. The screens show the following paths:
Adding an external bank account
Process of transferring money to an external bank account
Feature Test & Results
Overall, the testing of the new feature was successful with users expressing how seamless and smooth the navigation process of adding an external banking account and transferring money was.
With that, common patterns were observed in how the users interacted with the prototype. Two main observations were:
The users having trouble with where to press to close the tabs.
Users find the second verification screen after adding an external account to be repetitive.
During the test, I also received some feedback from the users about the current UI of the TD Bank app, which was challenging for the users to understand or wished it could be improved on the app. These feedbacks were:
The icons at the top of the home screen are difficult to access with the hand when selecting them.
Users were confused about the letters of the profile icon at the top.
They also preferred to have a snapshot of their account’s balance on the home screen once logged into the app.
The texts on some of the screens were hard to read, making them bolder would be better.
Due to the constraints of the TD Bank mobile app UI design, these changes could not be made to the current app. However, the users brought good insights on where other functional areas of the existing app fall short that could be considered when updating the TD Bank mobile app in the future.
Revisions
Based on the feedback from the users, a few changes were made to the prototype making it easier for the users to have smooth navigation when adding other external accounts as well as during the process of transferring money. These changes were:
Adding a “done” closing button on the tabs. Users were struggling to close the tabs after performing a task.
Removing one of the confirmation screens. Users either thought the confirmation screen for the external account add-on was the same or felt that it was redundant and not necessary.
Reflection
Even though this project was about adding a feature to an existing product, I could see the external transfer feature being frequently used by many users, including me. During interviews, users asked whether they could do money transfers to external accounts in other countries or if there were a wire transfer option in the app. The addition of these features seems like an essential step to take next after considering TD Bank’s financial regulations.
Takeaways
Two major takeaways I got from this project were:
The limitations of the prototype could have altered the results of the testing. An example would be when users would put the amount of money, they would prefer to have a drop-down and select from there instead of having a pre-selected amount. These are limitations that could not be changed as time was a constraint and also adding this element would not be consistent with the current app UI.
Having TD Bank branding and components was nice to use as it was a time saver and also helped me put my focus on designing a useful feature that’s in coherence with TD Banks’ mobile app design system.
