Barclays Pingit
My main project during my time at ustwo London was developing the user experience of the Barclays Pingit app. Barclays Pingit is a peer to peer payment app that was the first of its kind. Our team worked closely together with the Barclays Product Lead and ustwo co-founder. I also provided mentoring for the junior UX designer on our team.
Role
Lead user experience designer
Team
Our team: myself, a junior UX designer, two visual designers and the project manager.
Activities Duration Barclays Pingit was the first peer to peer mobile banking app in Europe. It enabled anyone with a bank account and the Barclays Pingit app to send and receive payments. For the first time, people could send money to family or friends, pay their portion of a bill or pay small businesses with only a phone number and without needing their bank details. The app was free and available on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. When I joined the team the Barclays Pingit app was live in the App Store. I took over from the lead user experience designer to continue developing the user experience of the app. The main challenges when working on the Barclays Pingit app were the many stakeholders, the fast-paced environment and the strict banking security and compliance regulations. As a team, we needed to balance the improvement of the current app experience while developing new features. Screenshots of competitor banking apps and other relevant products were gathered for UX and UI inspiration. We presented ideas and inspiration within our creative team and kept the inspiration boards for reference when developing and improving features. We maintained app maps with high-level flows and app maps incorporating all UI screens. These app maps were essential to keep an overview, to track changes in each release and to communicate with stakeholders and developers at Barclays.
Concepting, sketching, wireframing, customer journeys, expert review, microcopy
2012 – 2013 (1,5 year)Background
Challenge
Process
Inspiration board
App maps
Wireframes
We continued to work with the wireframes that were created for the first releases of the app. Each section of the app had its own wireframe document, version control and changelogs were essential for managing a large number of documents.
Copy writing
Writing, reviewing and updating microcopy before a dedicated copywriter came on board. Improving consistency throughout the app, and between iOS, Android and web. All copy was listed and reviewed with the client.
Design solutions
Global navigation
A growing number of features and need for consistency between the Barclays apps, led to the introduction of a ‘global navigation’ pattern. The menu was organised based on a hierarchy of use and menu labels were improved. Sketches and wireframes were used in the ustwo studio for guerrilla user testing. We added the option to personalise the apps with a custom wallpaper, for which we had to overcome several privacy and security issues.
Pingit 2.0
In parallel to the continuous development of the app, we joined forces with the Barclays Banking creative team at ustwo for a series of sessions on a Pingit 2.0 proposition. The aim was to innovate and improve the UX and UI for Barclays Pingit and Barclays Banking apps. One main area we focused on was the transaction and payment detail screens. We introduced data to give insights into personal spending behaviour and chat options for payment requests (for example, when a friend paid for your concert tickets). We also added local business information, including ratings, contact information and deals. Our teams developed the UX and UI for Pingit 2.0 and we created a working prototype in house. Some of the solutions introduced were eventually incorporated into the Pingit app
Results
Barclays Pingit received high ratings in the app store (4 or more stars), it received multiple awards won and was named in the ‘Best of 2012 App Store’ in the UK.
