Are UI Fintech designers here to make money look nice?

Some considerations UI Fintech designers should bring before sharing their work with the world

UI Fintech screens by Capi Creative Design

“…User Interface design is doing the most possible with the least number of elements.”

Let’s be honest, for those who are not used to it, finance can be complex to understand. As more Fintech are trendy for users to start digitalizing their money, it’s important that UI designers understand this challenge. In this blog, we will explore some issues that designers should anticipate.

“Flame On UI designers!”

Emily Stevens from CareerFoundry centres the UI design around the visual experience of a website, a video game or an app. UI designers or User Interface designers, create the design of all screens through which the user will be navigating from point A to B. The way the design presents obstacles or facilitates the user to accomplish a task starts from the UX methodologies until an excellent UI design.

Having in mind that they should produce visual and engaging interfaces, it is important they consider the niche they are working for.

As Fintech is an increasing market, UI designer should put their efforts from the beginning to differentiate from competence. Let’s start with some skills designers should consider.

Build an engaging product identity

Although the creation of the branding cant be necessarily the main task for UI designers, they should be able to understand branding at its core. Great management of branding by putting the right amount of it, is a must in for the user to understand who is talking to.

Kevin Lane Keller also remarks that a strong brand identity and the way it is presented to users, not only compels consumers to try a new product, would also have an impact by making them stay longer. UI design shouldn't forget about the importance of being coherent as well.

Responsiveness

The ability to quickly reaction is what Fintech apps should consider imperative. Tealfel agrees on how important is the answer at every step of the user journey. In order to increase trust in non-digital-savvy generations, the apps or interfaces should react quickly.

This brings the fact that designing should be less heavy than before. “UI design is doing the most possible with the least number of elements.” this will also help create Fintech interfaces that will not be surcharged and will give a slow answer.

The reason why responsiveness is a must is that people want to make sure the usage of their money is always under their control. Users should be able to not just have a quick answer, but availability and visibility at all times. No one would trust an interface that is not answering on time and manner with money.

Add some friction? I'll say yes!

Interaction friction is when something slows the user down or makes some boundaries to accomplish some tasks. Although it is mentioned above that design in Fintech should be quick, friction can be good. It may sound like a bad thing, however, it can improve the user experience.

Most product designers agree that the experience should be smooth and practical. but in the case of Fintech and managing money platforms, Seamgen for example mentions friction at confirming and validating actions would help to create security and self-confidence in the decision-making process.

How many times we have seen the windows confirming if our data introduced is right? well, this is the main idea. UI designers should be able to define clear designs for valid actions. However, it is important to ensure call-to-actions are prominent and reduce the number of steps during the journey. Definitely, helping users to do the least number of errors while managing money, is going to make the difference.

Finance is not a simple task

Multiple Fintech are always looking for innovating tedious tasks. For those who are not close to the topic, finance can be a difficult task, due to managing tons of information. In order to facilitate data visibility, therefore the whole experience, UI designers should be able to present data in dashboards and graphs.

When using dashboards, we optimize time in tasks and gain more interest from the user. Dashboards will also provide for users to real different data at the same time. Definitely necessary for decision-making and predicting performance or creating financial forecasts.

Jargon for dummies

Especially for Fintech platforms for payments or managing personal budgets, unknown terms or phrases will increase cognitive load for the user. While creating an interface UI designers should be able to work together with UX writers and not create confusion for users.

Industry-specific terms are important when the target is very specific too. However, Fintech should consider writing for all levels of users and use common words to avoid bad-decision making. If there is the case, using the design opportunities to get the definition of specific words, can be a good idea to solve this issue.

If you are a UI designer interested in the Fintech world, probably would help you to get used to jargon, to find ways to illustrate them easily as well.

I recommend you to read the article below, to understand some examples of finance jargon like API Banking or BIN: https://m2pfintech.com/blog/50-popular-fintech-terms-you-must-know/

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Continuous iterations

All work related to user design demands constant improvement whether is fintech or any other digital market. Claire Lowly from Punckick explains to us what UI audit consists of. First, Lowly mentions that UI designers should create an inventory of the product designed. She refers to elements like buttons, links, checkboxes, and any other elements included in the interface. According to her, this is crucial as the basis of the user experience, is to understand how human begins to interpret objects in the digital world. Therefore, we could also conclude. that it will reveal behaviour as well.

Once the audit should be completed, the designer needs to set a list of best practices. As creating digital products demands multiple experts, performance experts and tools will be important to create this list of practices. Data behaviour tools such as Google Analytics or Hotjar can help to improve UI design for websites. The results will be seen as which elements might be underperforming, while others are helping the users to reach their goals.

So, is it just to make it look nice?

In the creation of a digital product, UI designers should be seen as the main ones responsible to disrupt and innovate in the Fintech market from design perspective. However the digital creation also asks for full attention in practices for interaction and writing as well, so this is where can not agree UI designers are only creating appealling interfaces, but empowering the user through good visual practices.

À bientôt, amigos!