A New BofA App — Case Study

A re-imagination of BofA’s Mobile Banking App.

I use my Bank of America app regularly for simple tasks, like checking in on my general finances, paying off credit cards, and sending money to friends and family. I also have the Chase App for other accounts, and having used it for some time, I couldn’t help but feel like the BofA app is behind the times, leading me to try my hand at modifying (and hopefully improving) Bank of America’s mobile app experience.

Challenge

Try to design an interface and experience for the BofA app that is modern and intuitive. As a utility app, it should be extremely easy to accomplish basic tasks and view necessary information in a glimpse.

Note: This redesign is focused on the two most used parts of the application, which are outlined in the research section of this case study.

Goal

• Display user’s most valuable information clearly

• Minimize friction to accomplish important tasks on the app

Research: Understanding the Users

I conducted user interviews for 5 users (the time constraint made it difficult to find more people and meet with them to conduct interviews), attempting to gather information about how users currently perceive the BofA app, learning about what they like/dislike about the app, and any changes they might like to see.

User Personas

After interviewing the users mentioned before, I created three personas to test against for the rest of the design process. These 3 users represent what I believe to be major demographics that should be kept in mind when designing the application.

Feature 1: Home Screen

It’s expected for the home screen of a mobile banking app to show a summary of all of your accounts. Users use this screen to assess the status of their accounts, so it should be easy for them to see when action is needed and to execute those actions. Important information items here are currently:

• Account Name/ID

• Account Balance/Available Balance

• Get Support

Some issues that I’ve found with the home screen based on user interviews and personal experience are:

• It can be difficult for users to quickly identify their accounts

• No immediate option for actions like transfer/pay

• Rewards points not shown (shown on dashboard, not main home screen)

Addressing the first issue, I redesigned that section of the home screen to make identification of accounts more clear by allowing the users to give unique names to their individual accounts, and if applicable, a small image of the card. An additional label by the dollar amount helps to make it clear whether the account had an “available balance” or “account balance” as another differentiating factor. “Payment Due” and the amount due have been added to the appropriate accounts as well to provide the user with more valuable information with less action.

I also added additional options to allow the user to take action on their accounts from the home page, making it easier to complete any task the user had in mind when entering the app. Credit cards can be paid using the button clearly labeled “Pay Bill” and checking and savings accounts have the option to “Transfer Money” allowing the user to transfer funds from their cash accounts to any other cash accounts they own, likely between said checking and savings accounts (as well as investment accounts which I did not include in this project).

Feature 2: Accounts — Paying Bills and Transferring Money

The BofA app supports bill pay for credit cards and other bills digitally, but I’ve experienced a strange occurrence. I have a credit card with them that cannot be included on bill pay, so how am I supposed to pay off my card? Apparently, “transferring money” to the credit card counts as paying toward the balance, but this is an issue that can be easily corrected with clear and consistent wording.

Note: This is as of early 2019 when testing for this case study.

I’ve mainly decided to solve the problem by including buttons on each account depending on the account type, and on the transfer tab, functionality has been simplified, and the bill pay tab has been removed. Because bill pay functionality can be accessed immediately on the first screen, I’ve hidden the more traditional bill screen and placed it in the app’s full menu, where I’ve also included other less priority features.

Zelle has also become a popular feature in today’s banking apps. It seemed important (especially with younger users) to make this feature easily accessible, so it was included on the tab bar. Functionality within that feature is simple enough so I didn’t include redesigning that experience.

Testing the Redesign

Now that I’ve created all of the important screens in the new experiences, it was time to see if they’d work.

Checking Balances and Transaction History

This feature is very simple, and I didn’t have any quantitative measurements to compare, so I logged the feedback from the users and asked them questions to gauge the success of the redesign.

Overall, the response was positive, with consistent comments about the screens being visually prioritized more effectively. There was some questioning about the size of each cell on the home page for users with many accounts which I understood. If I continued the redesign, I would perform and A/B test with the design I created here, and another version that had collapsed cells with the option of expanding to see more detailed information.

Paying a Credit Card Bill

This was one of the biggest gripes among the interviewed users. Major points of concern were the confusing flows to successfully pay a bill, as well as the amount of steps it takes to do so.

To counter that, bill pay is only available on the home screen or within specific accounts. The same users were given the task of paying the credit card balance, and the time and number of taps were recorded for the original and new designs for comparison. The conclusion was that the new flow was extremely easy, especially when compared to the current design.

Redeeming Credit Card Rewards

A few users shared that they often use the app to redeem rewards, but the rewards are sometimes difficult to get to. I performed the same test as above with the goal of “Redeeming Your Credit Card Rewards” and received positive feedback about the new button placements. The amount of work it takes to redeem the rewards has been lessened significantly, and makes redemption less frustrating for users.

Sending Money through Zelle

There weren’t a lot of changes here, but in my personal experience, I’ve observed first-time Zelle users take a moment to figure out where to find that functionality. I simplified this by giving it a tab of its own, considering how many users prioritize Zelle in their usage of the app. This would reduce friction for people who are using it for the first time. I performed a simple test for this: I had the design readily available on my phone, asking friends I was with if they send people money using their personal banking app. For those that responded no, I showed them the new home screen and asked them how they’d send money to friends. I noted the level of confidence and delay it took for them to point to their answer. All 20 people were able to locate it immediately, with more than half responding “here” very confidently. I understand this test doesn’t have much of a foundation, but it at least allows me to guarantee that users will still be able to find that function when it isn’t combined with the “Transfer” tab.

Success?

I think so! The sample group was rather small, so I’m considering this a positive impression on the first iteration of this redesign. With a larger test group, it’s very possible that the response could skew in a very different direction. If I could do this differently, I’d take more time to personally interview a group of at least 15, so I could still personally observe the users’ physical reactions and even tonality in their questions. You can find the sample group’s responses in the user research document found earlier in this case study.

Overall I enjoyed the process thoroughly and learned a lot about where my skills are in different stages of the UX design process. Because the companies I worked at . for the last 5 years were early-stage start-ups, the timelines for the design processes were extremely tight, often giving only a week, and sometimes only a day, to design full features. I wanted to test myself and go through a more holistic process, hopefully highlighting my strengths and weaknesses so that I can continue to grow as a designer. In that regard, this was undoubtedly a success.