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Case study
Bain & company
What makes a cracking all-digital bank in the Middle East?
Our client was launching an all-digital bank to service a key region in the Middle East. Our primary design goal was to help promote positive financial behaviour among our users. I lead a team from the very early stages of helping to define the value proposition all the way through prototyping and testing with customers as we co-designed the final experience.
We facilitated research sessions with key audience groups, design thinking sessions with stakeholders from across the business and co-design sessions with front-line staff. These activites were instrumental in steering the strategic direction of the service and refining the final experience.
FinTech in the Middle East is completely unique to the rest of the world. There are of course some commonalities, but there are traditions unique to the region such as explicit gender roles, social practices such as Jameya and financial taboos dictated by Sharia Law. All of which would play a key role in the design.
The final design embraced a visual language that bridged aesthetics of the region to the design patterns seen in some of the leading neo banks in the Europe. This helped ensure a sense of familiarity and trust, while also offering a fresh, modern experience. The service was designed to provide users with transparency over transactions and insights related to spending habits, helpful nudges away from negative spending patterns, reminders about zombie recurring payments while being personalised and intuitive.
