About USAA
USAA offers insurance, banking, and investment services to U.S. military members, veterans, and their families. The USAA app allows users to manage finances, pay bills, and monitor credit accounts.
The Problem
The existing state of the native iOS and Android applications bill pay experience was presenting problems for our internal support staff and users. There were core usability issues, an outdated UI, and a lack of critical functionality that would allow for a positive user experience and protect against frequent errors. The application also needed to be made compliant with new federal banking law as well as accessibility standards.
The Solution
An updated experience following the current native design guideline’s best practices with a heavy focus on decreasing user errors, improving overall usability, decreasing burden on support staff, and ensuring legal compliance.
Role: Sole Designer | Timeline: 3 months | Team: Design, Product Owner, 12 Developers
Process and Learnings
I started this project by conducting a heuristic evaluation of the application's current state meeting with our design research team, legal compliance team, product owner and stakeholders, development team, and my design team, whose primary focus is the web version of bill pay.
Overview
Our research revealed that our user base is a diverse, international group of people with varying levels of technical prowess. The research team provided raw information that I synthesized to identify the most important user needs and pain-points. These include the ability to manage bill pay related actions in one convenient place, reduce late fee occurance on outstanding payments, share bills and split payments with others, and reduce common errors when sending payments such as duplicate or overdue payments.
Our business goals were similar, with an additional focus on reducing the cost of the support team’s burden and ensuring full legal compliance with the new federal banking laws and accessibility guidelines.
Research and Discovery
Over the next few weeks, I led our design team in analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, collected by our design research team over the past 6 months. Key results were captured, and used to inform behavioral archetypes, customer experience maps, information architecture diagrams, and other foundational UX artifacts.
Design Goals
Our user research and internal workshops allowed me to define the primary user goals and business needs for paying bills through the app.
User Goals
Manage all bill pay related actions in one convenient place
Reduce late fees on outstanding payments
Share bills and split payments with others in app
Simplify the UI to reduce user errors when sending payments
Business Needs
Reduce occurrence of late payments
Reduce occurrence of accidental double payments
Ensure application is fully federally compliant
Relieve burden on support staff to reduce company expenses
High-Fidelity Solutions
Key Flows
These are some of the critical flows that I delivered as part of the bill pay experience. My primary focus was simplifying and improving the “All Bills” “Add Bills” and “Make Payments” flows. These designs are the product of significant user feedback, adhering with compliance laws, and a fresh design that offers improved usability.
