CIBC - Design Sprint

Research/Storyboarding/ Prototyping/Usability Testing
‍Please note that this project was purely for academic purposes.

My role: Researching trends, prototyping savings goal pages, and conducting 4 usability tests
Team: Gabrielle Craievich, Matteo Distefano, Hanan Khalif, Nader Meleika, Sarah Reniers
Date: April 2024

Overview: During a 2-week design sprint with the University of Waterloo, led by CIBC, our team tackled the challenge of enhancing user retention in the CIBC banking app. Users of the app weren’t fully utilizing it's features, so to address this, we embraced gamification—a proven strategy with success in other domains.

Starting with Research

Gamification Insights

To kick off our design process I took part in a research session spanning existing best practices in gamification as well as notable uses of gamification among competitors. The purpose of this process was to understand how gamification could be incorporated meaningfully and effectively within CIBC’s app to enhance its features rather than becoming an unneeded distraction. We found several key findings that informed the rest of our design process:

Make points matter

A clear virtual economy is important for users to understand the value of in game currency and how they could benefit from it.

Introduce rewards early

Introducing rewards early in an experience can increase user engagement with gamified systems

Support user goals

Gamification should enhance the user’s experience and contribute to their goals in a meaningful way.

Introducing the User

Our Persona

Our target audience were young professionals living in metropolitan cities and looking to gain a stronger grasp of their spending habits while saving towards their first big purchases. To represent this audience we created the persona of Sam Johnston. With our design prompt and Sam's goals in mind in we created the following how might we statement.

Coming up with solutions

Ideation Phase

Through a collaborative brainstorming session on fig jam we generated several ideas on stickies and converged on our favorite through dot voting. Our aim was for the full team to have an opportunity to influence the direction of our project and create buy in from all members on the ideas we eventually settled on. We eventually settled on three key features.

The Verdict

Main Features

1. Visualized Savings Goals

Savings goals that are built overtime as users progress towards their savings targets.

2. Badge Challenges

Challenges that incentive users to engage with the app in exchange for badges and points.

3. Reward System

Rewards that can be redeemed through points accumulated from completing challenges.

The screens above represent the final versions of these features, but it took a few steps to reach this point. Let's s have a look at where the prototyping process started.

Early Sketches

Storyboarding

We created storyboards to visualize how our solution could address the needs of our persona, Sam. These storyboards helped us envision how Sam might interact with the app, including discovering new features like visualized savings and the gamified reward system. From these scenarios, we designed the core screens and user flows for our prototype. See below some examples, but note that it has been shortened to be more concise.

Building the first iteration

Mid-fi Prototyping

I designed screens for a savings goal page where Sam could track progress toward a new car. The page included a visual representation of the car, a progress bar, and a date picker to view prior goal status. Initial prototyping was completed swiftly in one day before testing on the next.

Challenging our assumptions

Testing & Feedback

Our testing process involved both moderated and unmoderated, with a total of 14 participants. I personally conducted 4 remote tests over video calls. Our questions combined qualitative experiential inquiries with quantitative scales to gather data. We conducted two rounds of testing, refining our iterations in-between based on feedback. Between rounds we also conducted a midway sprint review with our CIBC stakeholders.

Round 1 testing results

Lack of clarity of some written content
The placement of the button to adjust savings goals and add funds was unintuitive.

Stakeholder Feedback

Our stakeholders provided these key recommendations:

Ensure that rewards and points are consistently integrated.
Clarify how visualized goals differ from current functions
Don't be afraid to make things fun and playful.

Round 2 testing results

Lack of clarity on value of points towards user experience
Changing the position of the savings goal button made it more clear following iteration from round 1 feedback
The date picker required trial and error from users to grasp.

Note: Decrease in score likely due to an outlier in responses.

Iterate, iterate, iterate

Post Testing Changes

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1. Badge Redesign

In line with stakeholder feedback, I redesigned our badges to adopt a fun and playful style that would express the new gamified feel of the app.

2. Tutorial Carousel

To enhance user understanding of the app’s new virtual economy I designed a tutorial carousel to demonstrates the value of earning points and how they can be redeemed for tangible rewards.

3. Savings Goals Page

This page was simplified by removing the date picker, and relocating the adjust goal button. Otherwise badges were incorporated to increase engagement for this function.

Now let's see it in action

Final Walkthrough

Finally, here is a narrated walkthrough envisioning how Sam may interact with our gamified version of theCIBC banking app. In line with our goals derived from our research and testing results, the walkthrough illustrates how the application is effective at introducing new features to Sam while communicating the value of receiving points early on in the process. Furthermore, it shows how the redesigned app could integrate gamification in a meaningful way that promotes positive financial behaviour and incentivize sexploring features of the product.

Some final thoughts

In Reflection

This process was very informative in being able to move very quickly towards a solution whilst continually adapting our work to feedback and testing. Our advisors at CIBC we're very impressed by how improved our prototype was at its final stage compared to our first iteration during our midway review. With more time we would consider how we might be able to gamify even more features of the application.