Commonwealth Bank
Collaborated with Commonwealth Bank to strategically redesign their Daily IQ business analytics toolkit, significantly boosting low customer engagement and optimising the user experience to deepen client relationships and drive retention.
Services
User Research and Documentation
Usability Testing
Workshop facilitation
Wireframing
Prototyping
UI Design
Deliverables
Fully annotated, functional and pixel-perfect design prototypes
Updated research documentation, including personas
Outcomes
Customer engagement increased significantly across the entire toolkit over a period of 18 months
Transformed internal stakeholders from skeptics to champions of the product
Despite being available for three years, Commonwealth Bank's Daily IQ, a complimentary business analytics toolkit, suffered from low customer engagement. This represented a significant missed opportunity for CBA to deepen customer relationships, enhance financial literacy among its business clients, and ultimately, drive customer retention and potentially cross-sell other business banking services. Our initial hypothesis was that usability issues were hindering adoption and preventing businesses from extracting the full value provided by the platform.
To understand what was going on, I started with a discovery phase to properly immerse myself in the Daily IQ and CBA business landscape. This involved meeting with the key project stakeholders to understand their view on the challenges and requirements of Daily IQ, and a comprehensive review of the research documentation that had been compiled throughout the project’s lifecycle.
Throughout this process we identified two key personas for Daily IQ – the business owners who had been the focus previously, and a new persona, the CBA relationship managers who worked with customers to make the most of CBA’s business services.
Technical constraints
The legacy technology platform that Daily IQ was originally built on was a major challenge that really constrained some of my design solutions throughout this engagement, as it was unable to implement some standard design patterns that would have been possible with current web technologies.
I continued to propose new ideas and championed the idea of using a more current front-end framework for the user interface while working around the current constraints with different solutions (e.g. alternate, less effective design patterns). Eventually a new framework was chosen and work began on rebuilding the interface as tools were updated.
Following the discovery phase, we defined and started running an ongoing cycle of usability testing and design iteration that aligned with the development team’s agile sprints. Each sprint focused on one to three tools (depending on tool complexity) within the Daily IQ toolkit and was aimed at identifying any usability issues and potential solutions for further testing in the next sprint.
From a research and design perspective, each sprint followed the same high-level approach using the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework:
An additional focus of the research within each sprint was the validation and update of existing research to ensure we maintained a current picture of the product’s users. In the first couple of sprints I also ran some interviews with CBA relationship managers to define an initial proto-persona which was then added to the ongoing validation and update cycle.
Every single tool within the Daily IQ toolkit was reviewed, updated, tested and relaunched during my engagement with the Commonwealth Bank. Here are a few examples:
Daily IQ Dashboard
Daily IQ Dashboard
Originally a static set of navigation cards that customers had no control over, the Daily IQ dashboard was seen by all customers after logging in. Research suggested that customers wanted information about their business provided at-a-glance, and they weren’t always sure what each tool should be used for.
The dashboard was redesigned to address this feedback with a suite of new features and information, including:
Customisable cards with dynamic, up-to-date information that customers can add and remove as desired
Toggle between month-to-month and year-to-year comparison
Categorised quick links to every tool with clear information about their purpose
Cash flow trends
Feedback on this tool suggested it wasn’t flexible enough for customers, as it originally only provided a monthly view across all accounts. Some customers also weren’t sure what to do with the information, even though they found it interesting.
The redesign focused on making the information more granular, allowing them to view it by day and week in addition to the default monthly view, and by different account types (e.g. savings, term deposits, transaction, or a custom set of accounts defined by the customer).
Additionally, a new “What’s next?” section was added in collaboration with various CBA relationship managers, providing a clear set of actionable steps customers could take based on this information including using other Daily IQ tools. This new section was ultimately added to every tool in the toolkit, customised specifically to each tool.
Daily IQ Cash flow trends
Daily IQ Foreign exchange economists’ forecasts
Foreign exchange economists’ forecasts
This calculator was a new tool that I designed during my time with the team, and it was definitely the most complex tool in the toolkit, requiring plenty of research and sessions with CBA experts to understand the world of FX markets, forecasting and hedging.
The final result was tested with and received praise from experts in the field, including comments such as “it’s the simplest way to view all of the key information on FX hedging and exposure I’ve ever seen”.
Customer engagement
Across the full Daily IQ toolkit, customer engagement increased significantly over a period of just 18 months.
Stakeholder engagement
As we engaged CBA relationship managers in the design process, they quickly became champions for the product as it improved, using it in their sessions with existing customers.
While I never saw any clear metrics during my time working on Daily IQ, anecdotally it appears this was a significant factor in the increased customer engagement.
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