scotia-empower

Overview

It is hard for people to understand financial terminology and acronyms on banking sites.

Not every consumer or potential consumer—people who are banking customers or people who are exploring banking options—that visits an online banking site knows what every financial term or acronym means.

Example of financial acronyms present on the Scotiabank website

Background

Before diving in, we explored the problem space a bit more.

For the S:\HA<KS 2023 hackathon, hosted by Scotiabank and Tangerine, we were challenged to create a technology focused solution championing sustainability and client empowerment in banking operations and customer experiences for every future.

Together as a team, we took some time to research the challenges people faced while banking in Canada. As we read articles online on the public’s perception on this topic, it became clear that newcomers faced the most the banking challenges which are all closely related to difficulty navigating online banking and unfamiliarity with financial terminology.

According to Moving 2 Canada:

The newcomers they interviewed easily got confused with new financial terminology and wished that there were short explanations of Canadian banking terms to help them make sense of it all

Rapid research & brainstorming.

Problem Definition

How might we help consumers feel empowered to make the right banking choices?

From the design space given and secondary research we gathered initially, we decided that we wanted to focus on designing a solution that could empower all clients as a whole. This way we would address the aspect of designing customer experiences for every future in the problem statement.

Research & Analysis

What if we provided tools that are available to the user directly on the Scotiabank website?

Due to time constraints and available resources at the time, we interviewed a few family members, friends, and fellow hackers to learn their needs, motivations, and frustrations with banking in Canada. Among these individuals, we spoke to newcomers and natives, ages 18-55, who are currently living in Canada.

Overall, people feel that the process of understanding financial terminology is time-consuming.

They often copied and pasted terms they were unfamiliar with into a search engine and read long explanations which left them more confused than when they started. This process is both tedious and time-consuming. We want to ensure that people feel empowered in making the most suitable banking decisions for their situation by improving their accessibility to financial education.

Solution

We focused on designing two new features: a survey for personalized product recommendations and a learning tool.

1. Survey for personalized recommendations

A quick survey on the Scotiabank landing page enables consumers to personalize what is recommended to them. Incorporating NLP can help tailor the customer experience on the website for each individual case and help differentiate the visibility of banking products. As well, language/text recognition technology can be utilized to assess what consumers know and what the learning tool needs to highlight.

Original

Our design

Sample survey question

2. Learning tool

An educational widget, accessible on all web pages with optional articles and embedded definition pop ups, is easily accessible to consumers and empowers them with financial education as they navigate through the site.

Educational widget

Learning mode active

Results &
Reflections

The judges were thoroughly impressed with our solution and we were awarded 3rd place overall.

Pictured from left to right (image 1): Wyeth Shiu, Isabelle Lau, Erica Grandy, Elena Xu, and Sheldon Lewis

Don't be afraid to embrace discomfort

From this hackathon experience, I was challenged as a designer and it forced me to put myself out there. Participating in a hackathon was something that used to be way outside of my comfort zone but after completing one, it has made me want to participate in more.

I learned from this experience that effective time management and avid collaboration among individuals with diverse skill sets lead to great accomplishments.