We’ve just launched a new website for Qudos Bank as part of its transition from Qantas Credit Union.
The site marks a dramatic change from the organisation’s old website, both in terms of branding and technical underpinning.
These days we’re all under pressure to produce new software, new features and new interface improvements quickly. And the speed demanded by a market of disruptors and startups is ever-increasing.
Within this context, techniques such as agile and lean startup can help immensely to identify critical issues, bring people together in constructive forms and ensure a focus on delivery of software. However, in the rush to ideate, build an MVP and launch, we can still sometimes forget to validate assumptions and fail to incorporate the right kind of user input through selected contextual research. When this happens, sometimes the results can be frustrating; other times they can be disastrous.
Two recent instances have highlighted this. One is well known: Microsoft’s now-infamous Tay AI bot fiasco. The other is virtually unknown but personally frustrating to me: the recent relaunch of the public website for my son’s school Trinity Grammar.
Continue reading “How user testing can go wrong: two case studies”
Biometric authentication using fingerprints is meant to both improve security and simplify the authentication UX – but what happens when your fingerprint has been stolen? How do you reset it?
Continue reading “My fingerprint’s been stolen! How do I reset it?”
The other night I attended a presentation from Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain. Chain is a blockchain infrastructure company from San Francisco that completed a USD$30M fundraising from finance industry companies last September.
Adam spoke about how blockchain will transform not just finance but a range of industries where assets can be easily digitised. Here’s my take on some of the key points in the presentation…
Just as the digital revolution allowed for the creation of digital assets such as music, news and movies, it also supports the creation of truly digital money.
A recent article in Bank Innovation called Agile Development Has Banks Failing Fast (in a Good Way) by Philip Ryan presents a range of cogent points around the benefits and importance of agile development methodologies. These include:
All of this is true and salient.
Continue reading “Agile development and fast failure is part of a bigger picture”
The other day I was re-reading a post from last October in Bank Innovation called The Case for More Visible Payments by Philip Ryan which highlighted an important point in the looming transformation of payments capabilities: transparency.
Much of the discussion in recent years about payments disruption has highlighted the potential benefit of new capabilities to displace the payment component of a commercial transaction to the background; simplifying the process, removing friction and emphasising the value-adding component of the transaction.
The case in point that is always cited is, of course, Uber. Recent coverage in Sydney of yet another round of outrage over Uber’s surge pricing has highlighted the brand risk associated with making payments ‘too invisible’ In the most recent spate of complaints, Uber customers have complained about fare increases of up to 800% over new year’s eve.
I had the pleasure of attending the Next Bank Sydney Semi-Finals of the FF16 Fintech Semi-Finals at Stone & Chalk on 16th December.
Five organisations at varying stages of development pitched their concepts. Each had only 5 minutes.
Here’s my brief summary/assessment of each (apologies for any errors).
The new Bank of Sydney website was launched on 17th Dec 2015.
It’s a newly redesigned responsive website, with a bold new look that I, for one, really like. The site also includes an enhanced navigation experience with streamlined menus to give people quick access to the products and services that they’re looking for.
And I have to say that the home page forex calculator is particularly nice.
Congratulations to everyone involved 🙂
Came across this very nice post today by Jim Marous summarising results from an Accenture study on corporate innovation.
Some of the key outcomes of the study discuss many of the things we all know to be true:
But there are two other lessons in the article I particularly liked.
Continue reading “Building an innovation culture in banking”
Anthony Voigt 