Mobile P2P Payments

The credit unions of Canada were first in the country to offer the ability to send funds from one member account to another via SMS and email using smartphones.

e-Transfers: a secure, easy alternative to cheques and cash.

This project was a collaborative effort between the teams behind the MemberDirect online and mobile banking platforms and Interac.

For users, sending funds must be fast, intuitive, secure and reliable — without the sender or recipient exchanging any personal or financial information in the process.

As the senior interaction designer I was tasked with ensuring that the user experience was carefully considered, documented and clearly articulated to the parties involved. Preliminary designs were tested extensively in informal usability sessions to hone our understanding of what was optimal for users.

Press:

• Moneyville, “Interac expands email transfers to cellphones”
• Enterprise Magazine article (cover shown above)

Download Mobile P2P Wireframes [pdf]

MemberDirect Mobile Web

Mobile is big news for credit unions — it allows them to serve their members with the services historically offered at friendly local branches, but from nearly any location.

Designing a mobile banking web app was an interesting and exciting challenge. On the one hand, the distinct capabilities and limitations of mobile devices introduce fascinating new use cases. On the other, the way basic banking functionality works has been thoroughly shaped, technically and culturally, by years of usage on desktop and laptop computers. The users have big expectations for what should happen on rather constrained machines!

What would best serve the client credit unions? What would best serve their members? What approach would best anticipate changes in the rapidly changing mobile landscape?

To arrive at answers to these questions we undertook extensive competitive analysis, mobile environment scans and user testing to really deeply explore the relationships people have with their iPhones, Blackberry’s and Android devices — what works, and what doesn’t. The knowledge gained allowed us to conceive of an app that was lean and mean where it needed to be, but with powerful features like Find a Branch/ATM and multi-signer business transaction management. Through further testing with prototypes and a range of devices we were able to refine our approach and arrive at something we could execute.

In many ways, the process helped to reshape the way the company views their own services across all products moving forward.

Example site: Coast Capital Savings’ Mobile Web App

View Mobile Web Wireframes [pdf]

Mobile SMS Banking Demo

Coast Capital Savings rolled out a new feature on their online banking site (powered by MemberDirect Integrated) that allowed their users to conduct basic banking functions via SMS on their mobile phones. The mobile banking features were designed to be easy and convenient for any feature-phone equipped user… but  some orientation would be required.

I helped CCS to create a comprehensive, concise demo to show users how to make the most of the new SMS-based features available to them.

View Mobile SMS Banking Demo (in new window)

MemberDirect Integrated

The MemberDirect family of web banking products serve as the most important branch for dozens of credit unions and other financial institutions across Canada.

Such institutions include:

• VanCity
• Coast Capital Savings
• North Shore Credit Union
• Canadian Tire Financial Services
• Westminster Savings.

MemberDirect allows these companies — some very small with just a handful of staff — to compete directly with The Big Banks.

I’ve designed and refined many of the user interfaces featured within these products, always with an aim to making them more powerful and intuitive for end users. Additionally, I’ve consulted with and undertaken the visual and information design tasks for many financial institutions to help make sure that their online presence —as hosted on the platform — reflects the brand and values they hold to in their brick-and-mortar branches.

MDB Usability Report

This document was created based on upon extensive heuristic analysis and user testing that I conducted on MemberDirect Business, an online banking product for small and medium sized enterprises.

MemberDirect Business is an incredibly powerful, flexible and sometimes daunting application. What could be streamlined? What could be taken away? What would benefit from being built out further? What complexity could be hidden from the user most of the time (and which user?)? What elements needed to be brought to the fore?

To start, I needed to dig deep and research what small-to-medium sized businesses really needed from a web banking application. The ideas, hunches and conversations were drafted up and refined into a prototype that was used for testing. The prototype itself as refined as testing proceeded.This document assisted product development and product management in setting priorities for the product roadmap and helped to enhance user experience across the product line. It also sparked a more concerted corporate interest in user experience itself.

View MDB Usability Report

SEE-It Dashboard

Real Living Solutions had the idea of building a tool for organizations that would help them track their progress against their own social, economic and environmental goals. However, they needed some help creating an interactive, engaging interface that could transform the findings the tool offered forth into something simple, direct and actionable…. and maybe even fun?

It would need to be rigorous enough to satisfy the specialists that measure such things at organizations, yet accessible and inspiring to employees and stakeholders not academically trained in the underlying concepts.

I collaborated heavily on the interface design and was responsible for much of the front end development of the resultant rich Internet application.

It was gratifying to see the application in use for organizations such as Nature’s Path, BC Hydro, Grouse Mountain, Public Works Canada, University of British Columbia and Novex Couriers.

View Novex Courier’s SEE-It

What is Sustainability?

This project, a supplemental piece to Real Living Solutions’ SEE-It, started with the following goal: succinctly illustrate the changes that are taking place on our planet so that we can understand what we need to do to live more sustainably.

Teaming up with a visual designer and an environmental consultant, I did the interaction design and development for this Flash-based piece.

View What is Sustainability?

Starfrood

This game, a variant of the arcade classic Moon Lander, was developed when I was in the Information Technology program at Capilano University and represents my first full-on, focused exploration of programming and motion graphics (not to mention an early stab at design).

For a period, this game took on a life of its own on the Internet. I found myself fielding emails from people from all over the world wanting to know about tips and tricks. People were spending their weekends trying to best other players. It was pretty great.

This project taught me a valuable lesson: people can really tell when you’ve had fun building something. And so I include it here.