CIBC Credit Cards
A better way to find your
CIBC credit card.
This project is an unsolicited redesign that aims to improve the user experience of the credit card application process on the CIBC mobile app.
CHALLENGE
Credit Card Application
The credit card application process on the CIBC mobile app, due to its low perceivability and affordances, makes it very difficult for users to learn about the products and decide which card to apply to.
MY ROLE
UI/UX Designer
I was responsible for user research, competitive analysis, persona, user journey, wireframing, prototyping, content strategy, and usability testing.
CONTEXT
JAN - FEB 2021
This 4-week side project was created by a group of 4 people. Design tools such as Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator were used to create this project.
THE PROCESS
USER RESEARCH
DISCOVER THE PROBLEM
A practical problem arises in CIBC’s banking app with young individuals who are interested in obtaining their first credit card. Since this particular group is new to having a credit card, they likely have very little knowledge about how credit cards work and how to apply for credit cards.
Survey results from 26 people (18-23 years old) show that 34.6% of people reported that one major problem of obtaining their first credit card was that they had no idea where to start, while 30.8% of people also reported the process being too complicated.
A Breakdown of Users' Decision-Making
Process on Current CIBC App
Input Stage
The input stage refers to the stage of encoding the information presented on the banking platform. One input problem of the CIBC mobile app is that the information lacks visual hierarchies.
According to user feedback, there are hardly any visual hierarchies on the CIBC mobile app that aid the direction of visual attention. As a result, the lack of information prioritization can cause troubles for users in locating a specific element, extracting relevant content, etc. These problems will subsequently lead to confusion in decision-making.
Process Stage
The process stage refers to the stage of dealing with the given information. One of the problems in the process stage is information overload.
Results from our online survey and usability testing show that users typically spend less than 10 seconds reading the card summary, however, the content on the CIBC mobile app takes more than 3 minutes to read through. Combined with the use of jargon, the overwhelmingly long and complex text may result in information overload, which occurs when the level of information exceeds the decision-maker’s information processing capacity.
Output Stage
The output stage refers to the stage of carrying out the action during the interaction with the banking platform. The goal of the CIBC mobile app is to promote the output, that is, the action of proceeding with the card application. However, the cost-reward relationship, a crucial metric in decision-making, is not well balanced.
On the CIBC mobile app, the potential benefits of getting a credit card are not well emphasized, while the costs (i.e., investment of time and cognitive resources) of proceeding with the card application are exaggerated by the inappropriate layouts and counterintuitive interactions.
TARGET AUDIENCE & PERSONA
Based on the previous findings, we’ve decided to target people who:
are young adults between the age of 18 – 25,
are applying for credit cards for the first time on the mobile app,
have very limited financial literacy.
USER JOURNEY
PROBLEM FRAMING
AFFINITY DIAGRAM
IDEATION
LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
REDESIGN
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
USABILITY TESTING
MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE
To understand the efficacy and impact of our intervention, we designed a usability testing session that measures and compares users’ decision-making processes with the original CIBC mobile app and the new prototype we built. During the usability testing session, 20 participants (male & female, 18 - 25 years old) were divided into 2 groups and performed tasks on the original CIBC mobile app and the new prototype, respectively.
Our new prototype helps users to achieve:
Reaction Time
Success Rate
Perceived Difficulty
Perceived Control