Ally Authenticated Responsive Redesign

Background

Ally originally had a silo-ed company structure. Each line of business worked by it's own set of rules and there was rarely any cross-pollination. Over time it became clear that this structure wouldn't work for the company and it wouldn't work for customers.

Customers wanted the ability to see and manipulate all of their financial information in one place.

The business wanted the ability to cross-sell other products and share data across lines of business.

This ultimately meant, big changes needed to happen. 

Project GOALS

• Create one login flow for all customers

• Unite lines of business without confusing customers

• Combine overlapping functions to create a seamless experience

• Allow for reorganization based on user preference

• Re-develop a navigation that could scale with product growth

• Make everything we touch responsive

Research

Normally, I’ll start a project by doing a competitive analysis, but this project was a little bit different. I had just moved from a more consumer facing IA role, to a role creating solely for the authenticated space. Not knowing the in’s and out’s of what we offered and how, I started this project by doing a content and navigation audit for all lines of business.

The navigation audit was fruitful in pinpointing the similarities and differences between the systems we were combining. 

The content audit helped explain why there were differences in the system site maps and basically gave me a starting point to understand what could be combined or simplified.

Next was a competitive analysis, where we compared 5 financial institutions (Capital One, Wells Fargo, BOA, BB&T and USAA) and 3 up and coming P2P payment apps (Google Wallet, PayPal and Venmo). Our main findings were that no-one was really combining lines of business very well. Most had separate logins for each LOB, complex navigation schemes and lacked a responsive experience. The P2P payment apps were on the right track, but they also didn't have all of the functionality we needed to account for.

The persona breakdown really helped us focus on the primary tasks and tools that customers are looking for within each line of business.

Personas

*These represent a high level summary of main goals/expectations of each persona group, not necessarily the personas themselves - there are too many :)

Navigation

During our research, we found a recurring trend. Users tended to bucket tasks into two categories, tasks they complete all the time and tasks they complete sparingly. Keeping that in mind, we started ideating different structures that could increase the prominence of primary actions and decrease the prominence of secondary actions.

The next obstacle we struggled with was which of the actions should be global and which should be local. Some tasks were only available to certain account types and some tasks were overlapping. 

We came to the conclusion that the only way we were going to help customers complete tasks efficiently was if we made the tasks contextual to the account type, dynamic based on account type, and also globally accessible.

Sketching

Before we got in too deep, we started sketching based on what we knew.

• Customers want to get in and get out

• Primary tasks are viewing account balances and transactions, making transfers, making payments, and setting up payments

• Some pieces were used a lot and some very little

• Customers want a clean and simple view

• Customers want to be able to track their spending and understand how spending will impact their long term financial goals

What we did...

• Highlighted primary tasks by pulling them out of the hamburger menu at larger screen sizes

• Grouped all common tasks together (Pay Bills, Pay People, Transfers, Deposits) into Move Money menu

• Created an activity area, where all activity could be viewed at a glance in a calendar or list format

• Created a miscellaneous menu containing all of the least commonly used features on the site, grouped into scannable categories

• Created an area for reporting or data analysis (this would hold PFM tools to help customers reach their financial goals for the future)

• Created a simplified view of dashboard content that focused on the most likely scenario

• Allowed for easy access to contact information to match brand standards

• Added financal management tools to the dashboard to help customers feel in control of their finances

Roadblocks

No design can make it to development without some types of roadblocks. Here's the short list.

• The credit card product servicing was hosted by a 3rd party

• The auto product was moving all customer information into a new database

• The invest product was a company we bought and integrated all while figuring out our new credit card product

• None of the customer service systems were being integrated at the same time as the line of business

• Payment flows for each line of business would not be able to integrate with each other

• PopMoney was moving to a new vendor

• Transfer flows could not be combined before launch. Each line of business had a separate access point

• CD customers were the most important user group

• A legacy donut graphic had to be included in some way

• Dueling business partners

I could go on, but I'll spare you...

Solution

Regardless of all of the roadblocks, we launched the end product and it was an amalgamation of sorts. 

Design Wins

• Exposing the navigation - Before the update, most of our customers, even after extended use of the hamburger navigation on desktop still either resented it's presence or had to do a double take as to how to get to their primary tasks. The exposed navigation allowed customers to get to their tasks efficiently, without having to think.

• Responsive - The Ally authenticated space is now on it's way towards being a fully responsive interface. This was a tedious task. Most of our product teams did not know anything about responsive interfaces before we started the project. There was a lot of explaining and re-explaining, process changes, communication barriers etc. Thankfully, now all the team members have strong knowledge-base around the subject matter and understand how important it is for us to continue towards our fully responsive goal.

• Consolidated Experience - Customers now have the ability to see all of their Ally accounts in one place. Next is consolidation of the types of money movement.

• Cash Flow - Customers would have the ability to see their cash flow from month to month to better understand how much they  

FUTURE WINS

• Remove hamburger navigation completely (from mobile) and expose more tasks contextually

• Combine all forms of money movement and allow for cross-pollination of lines of business

• Financial management tools that give customers a full picture of their financial life

• Simplified dashboard view

• Goal integration