Pitch for Nickel Bank (France)

 

 

 

Challenge:

Opening a bank account in France takes a significant amount of time and is especially difficult for people that are new in the country or have bad credit. A new online bank (Nickel) has been providing a solution to this problem, in collaboration with tobacco stores acting as representatives. In the stores (Tabac), users can open a new account or get a new card, as well as send, deposit cash and checks. In France, only Tabac stores are licensed to sell tobacco products. They are like newsagents, sometimes stand-alone or part of a coffee shop / restaurant.

Visa was creating a pitch for this client, and I was responsible for the user experience and research side of it. The main challenge was the limited time and minimal knowledge of both users and service.

 

 

Approach:

As we had only two days in Paris, a Guerrilla research approach was the most effective. The aim was to talk to as many customers and tobacco store owners as possible, in order to form a solid understanding of the audience, how they use the service and what problems they experience. Creating empathy maps from the findings worked very well for the team to understand of users’ views and behaviours.

From these we were able to identify opportunity areas for both clients and tobacconist, and select key user feedback notes for each. Following the same format, dedicated solutions / capabilities were also easier to be applied and communicated in the pitch deck.

 

 

It was essential to display the two sides of our users (end clients / tobacconists) and how opportunities as well as problems and solutions were all interconnected. Meaning that both sides were affecting each other and by treating a problem for one side we were actually helping the other one too.

 

 

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To emphasise this was an initial research phase, empty slots (placeholders) for additional notes were added, with the intention of this being an ongoing exercise. This was very successful during the pitch in engaging the client team to participate in this exercise, and provide valuable insight.

 

Opportunity areas were also treated as reflecting sides, with emphasis on specific needs. Following the placeholder approach of the empathy maps, spider diagrams were used to communicate the potential solution and the ongoing development of ideas and potential. Finally the two diagrams were joined to promote the holistic approach on all user audience.

 

 

Concept designs following client’s style guides were used, to display the application of the proposed solutions and communicate the benefits.

 

 

Further concepts to communicate all costs and features between different types of accounts. That was an area where most of the customers where frustrated about and relied on tobacconist to explain.