First Republic Bank

First Republic is a private bank tailored to high net worth individuals and is known for its white-glove service.

I worked within a small team of three designers to update the online banking applications. Within my first year at First Republic, a new vendor was selected for online banking. We began looking at new designs for the applications through sessions with stakeholders.

I was responsible for the design of the dashboard, my First Republic Team, accounts, and personal financial management. Post-launch, I worked with our vendors on iterative updates and corporate banking.

Case Study 1: Corporate BANKING / Wire Transfers

The Challenge

On a daily basis, bankers had to correct submitted wire transfers, causing unnecessary overhead. Clients were struggling to understand the instructions vs. what was actually needed to complete a wire transfer. Some clients abandoned the process and reached out to their banker instead to send a wire. 

My Role 

  • Performed a heuristic evaluation on the existing platform.

  • Worked closely with another designer on our team to sketch and design alternative applications.

  • Created prototypes and wrote the guide for the comparison study.

Process

I compiled a list of all the actions and attempted to complete each task, taking notes where issues arose. With the issues noted, we began with requirement gathering and ideation. We then sketched out ideas, vetted them with stakeholders and created a prototype.

Existing wire transfer

Proposed payment flow

Discovery 

We knew the wire instructions/terminology were problematic and varied from institution to institution. The language needed to be simplified in order to help clients understand what was needed to complete a wire. The existing forms were overwhelming and often confused users. We created a new version; the design focused on reducing areas in the form that are seldom used and stepped users through the process.  We tried to mirror how users think about sending money.

We did a baseline comparison of the existing wire transfer experience and a proposed design. We used one-on-one, task-based sessions with 11 business owners or managers who handled financial transactions for their companies. Each session lasted approximately 60 minutes.


Key Findings 

1) Baseline desktop app: Terminology was often a point of confusion for the participants when completing a wire transfer.

  • 8 participants said they were unsure what the “Receiving bank ID” meant 

  • 9 participants said they were unsure what “OBI” and “BBI” 

  • 8 participants did not know what “freeform” meant

  • 6 did not see an alert message that the cutoff time for wires is past

2) Wire Transfers: Of the 11 participants, many expected to be taken to the “Wire Activity” screen after selecting “Queue” instead of back to the “Create a Wire” screen.

  • 5 of the participants were unaware when a new wire was created

  • 5 participants did not readily see the “Wire has been created.” alert and thought their wire didn’t go through

  • 4 participants got stuck on a part of this task and said they’d call their banker to complete it. Participants expected to be taken to the wire activity page to see and approve their wire.

3) Payment prototype: Participants performed better and were more satisfied with the prototype 

  • The average error impact for the wire transfers prototype was significantly lower than the total impact for test site wire transfers.

  • Prototype (Total Impact Score = 15) 

  • Baseline site (Total Impact Score = 274)

  • All 11 participants commented that the task steps were much easier and more intuitive than the online wire transfer process and expressed a strong preference for the prototype’s task steps & content layout.

Results

We learned clients didn’t associate making a payment with wire transfers and found it much more intuitive to be stepped through the process. They didn’t care how their money was sent, they were more concerned about timing. Many clients expressed that the application should suggest which method is best based on how soon the money needed to be delivered.

Based on the findings, I recommended moving forward with the “make a payment” model.