HSBC's ATMs

The Challenge

ATM Usability Project was launched with the objective of improving bank’s customers experience with ATMs all over the country. Both structure and interface were outdated and, with the current updating system (by "client", what made the equipments update very difficult), transactions performance were compromised, also compromising the modern, technologic and cosmopolit image of HSBC.

The Project

In the initial phase of the project, surveys were carried out with clients of the bank, which resulted in the discovery of the main problem for the users: the tasks were long and complex, some of them too difficult to carry out without the help of a bank employee. The challenge then was to analyze all the banking operations available in the ATMs and identify ways to make them easier and quicker. In parallel to this process, the development team worked to implement a new way to upgrade and operate the ATMs without having to reinstall the service. This way it would also be possible to test, validate and change the system screens faster and less costly.

My Participation

My main responsabilities at this project were to map and redesign the bank transactions flux, dialog with business analysts and antecipate all possible scenarios for each transaction, and apply UI standards defined by HSBC design team. At the beginning of the project, I mapped all of the available transactions and created fluxograms for them. After this step, we (the design team) and the business analysts discussed how to simplify and reduce the transactions steps, creating a new low/medium fidelity flux for the system. After the working proccess was defined and the fluxes were validated by the Product Owners, the design team established an interface pattern, creating Design Standards consonant with the bank’s global strategy. My participation at this project finished with the delivery of all available transaction’s fluxes in high fidelity mockups. At the end of this phase, usability tests were made with real users and customers of the bank, in order to validate the solution presented. Also, some changes on the interface were made so that the system could work on different hardware equipments all over the country.

Results and lessons

This was my first big project acting focused on user experience. It brought me great and meaningful learnings, not only about design but also about technology and processes. During the project I could dialog with technology, development, accounting and financial professionals, meeting every single part involved on the building of a system. At this project I also realized how much important it is to validate the concept and project before the final development, avoiding the increase of project’s costs and reworking.