Introduction
As the Design Lead I architected and designed the Aella product, including it's design system, also implemented the visual language design, as provided by Design Agency (Da Design).
Design Brief
Business requirement is to make Aella a super financial solution that solves day to day financial problems for an average Nigerian.
This solutions includes:
Aella Credit
Get simple and easy access to funds.
Aella Notes
Invest the smart way on Aella Notes.
Aella Care
Get affordable insurance plans.
Payments
Bill payments made easy.
Competitive Research
Working with the requirement from the stakeholders, I did some digging on digital financial solution in Nigeria and how it has impacted people, it's limitations and draw backs. Looking at different existing digital solutions in Nigeria, and studying different approach used in creating seemless experience for daily digital banking solution.
My Observation
- User Journey can be complicated and long so users waste lots of time navigating around the program Interface.
- Also digital banking solution are less smart making users having to do alot of repetitive task.
- Poor visual heirachy can really confuse users, proper application of the principle of design, can really create a seemless experience for users.
Design Goals
- A seemless experience for users, using key design principles, like Emphasis to direct users to important informations, and needful actions to perform.
- Develop a workable Design System to create consistency and effective collaboration between designers and developers.
- Design should follow the modern mobile environment, including iOS UI and Android UI, and can accommodate different devices.
Personas creation
After my research. I did a couple of interview with a small sample of people with different social status, age group, and educational level, in order to foster better empathy and deeper understanding, I created 2 personas. They contributed to focusing on specific users’ needs, goals and expectations - helped me to step out of my own shoes, when needed.
First, Meet Aishat
A busy family Mum that owns a small resturant which she uses in supporting the family financially, but Aishat complains on how she spend alot of time in the bank fixing all the transactions she has to carry for the week.
And here's Uche
A Fresh bachelor who just got a paying job, and has alot of financial responsibility, Uche has always wished there was a good credit system with easy access to fund, as this will ease his financial struggles.
WHAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT... FOR THE USER
Coming from the primary research as well as with the help of personas, I identified the preliminary set of requirements that could drive for a viable solution. These are some observation from interview with some sample space of people.
- People need a brand they can trust that will always have their backs when they
are in any financial problems. - People want to do day to day transaction with alot more ease and quickly.
- People shy away from complicated task, as this makes them feel less smart, but will
engage more with digital product that is intuitive and easy to use.
User Flow
I and my Team did alot of brain storming on how best to structure the user flow for a seemless experience. Using different Personas to make sure we don't leave out some category of people.
Design Thinking
Grabbing pen and paper
From gathered Information, I created several sketches, and ended up with these sketches, where I focused on planing out a design system, with reusable components, with the goal of have a human centered design.
Wire Frame / Low Fidelity Design
After putting the ideas down on paper, I continued with wire-framing the most promising ideas in Figma. I ran the ones that I was most confident about with the team and therefore got some feedback.
Design System
Having a Design System is one of the most important necessity for any product, doesn't matter how simple or complex it is, below is how I break down design into component, and provide proper documentations on the use of different components.
These are just selected components among many for protfolio purposes.
High Fidelity Design
From previously highlighted design goals, the use of the primary Aella Blue Color gives Emphasis on important informations, and needful actions to perform, also the use of white space to reduce cognitive load.
Prototype / Usability testing
Prototyping is very useful for usability testing, because it points out the pain-points of the users, and how I can further improve the UI for better User experience.
Visual Language
With the help of the Visual design guide developed by design agency Da'design, I was able to integrate the approve visual language to our product design.
Iconography
The use of pixels are used to create a unique icon set. the conceptual direction for the iconography is clarity and simplicty.
Illustration style
The pixels combine with the hand-drawn aesthetic to create a unique language for Aella. This is combination is what makes our brand language unique.
Color pallete
Conclusion
Having over 11 years in visual design and communications (graphics and motion design) I was able to create visual elements/assets in accordance with the brand of the business, creating a visual design system with design tokens such as colors, typography, iconography, and illustrations, etc . these design elements and assets are stored in a design library like Figma which is then published for use across digital product files within the organization.
Design Impact
- I was able to drive over 70% in user growth and engagement by implementing a design system that effectively meets the needs of business and its end users, this design system includes world-class user experience designs (UED) across all digital products (Apps and Dashboards) backed with a beautiful visual language which increases usability and retention.
- In collaboration with my design teams and development team, we were able to build a super fintech app that covers a wide range of users' needs, such as payments, loans, insurance, savings, ticketing, etc. The design and launching of the app were a success thanks to our design system and understanding of user's needs, user downloads increased by over 100% (1M+ downloads on playstore) .
Learnings and Reflections
- Proper Research and wireframe prototype shouldn't be taken for granted, as it might cost the business lots of money and time if things are not properly structured in the initial stage of the project.
- it is crucial to allocate time for user testing before releasing it to the public as the goal is to create a product that prioritizes the user experience.
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