ONE TAP TO RULE THEM ALL
Getting deep in the purple
Adding a new search to the Nubank account
The Brazilian digital banking landscape went through an exponential growth since 2013, when the government approved a law that would change the requirements to create a bank account, thus propelling the innovation on the field and enabling the emergence of fintech in the country. It is no coincidence that Nubank was born the same year, and since then the legislation has evolved and more than 800 fintech were created in Brazil.
The purple bank is the biggest one among the LATAM unicorns and the only decacorn. In late 2020, its client base reached the 30M mark, up and away from competitors such as Banco Inter, C6 Bank, and Neon.
Finding Receiptland
Chances are that if you’re a grown-up and live on planet earth, you’ve likely faced the anxiety of being in financial debt with an institution or person. It’s stressful, to say the least. And then there might be interest fees. The longer it takes you to be even with your creditor, the more you’ll owe. Definitely not a situation where one wants to be in.
Now, imagine you’ve paid for something and everything is settled, but months later the collector asks for the receipt and you simply can’t find it. What would you do?
To locate payment receipts in Nu’s bank account, the users need to either use the search feature or scroll down the timeline that has every financial operation in it.
The timeline might be tricky to go all the way back to months ago even if you’re an avid user. The amount of information to eye-scan is enormous, they look alike and have no division at all.
On top of that, the search icon will only become visible when the user scrolls down and hits the timeline section top pixel, then it replaces the “help” icon.
The Four Horsemen of the Searchalypse
Through quantitative research, I was able to uncover some interesting data from current Nu’s bank account clients:
- 76% of users declared that they had to search for an old payment receipt before (three months old or more), considering 42 responses.
- From a total of 36 responses, 30% or 11 users, responded that they couldn’t find an old receipt.
- Out of the 25 users that did find an old receipt, 50% did it by scrolling down, 28% by search, and the rest by other means (like e-mail).
Even users that rated the “finding a payment receipt” experience as “great” declared that it took too much time and effort to find them.
Adding up the data from user interviews, I unpacked the information creating an affinity diagram, and then identified four major pain points:
Critical fail — users that did not find the receipt.
Endless scroll — users that complained about the length of the timeline.
Time-Consuming — users that expressed frustration over time spent.
Bad Findability — users that criticized the easiness of finding the receipt.
Meet Alex
The project's proto persona is Alex. He needs to find an old payment receipt for some medical exams he did a while ago. He’s sure it’s been paid, but can’t remember when nor the exact amount, or even which medium he used.
When Alex goes into his bank account looking for it he soon realizes that he’s going to need to scroll down a lot because the search option is not helpful.
Couldn’t this wild ride be smoother? Let’s take a closer look at the user flow considering the search feature.
Why does the user need to scroll all the way down to enable the search icon? Why would half of the users choose to scroll instead of searching through the search feature? It became clear that something was not right and this could be better.
Problem Statement
The Nubank account holder needs a way to filter financial operations because it requires a lot of cognitive effort to find old payment receipts.
Hypothesis
We believe adding a filter by date and category feature for Nubank account holders will help them find the financial operations they are looking for. We will know we are right when heatmaps show that the user is scrolling less and tapping search more before finding a payment receipt.
Treasure Map
The solution came out as the following:
Search always visible
No need to run a marathon with your finger anymore. My fix was to bring it up and get it parked at the header right beside the “help” icon, following the same standard of the credit card home. This would also correct the “disappearing magnifying glass” bug that happens when your search returns no result (more information in the end of this post).
Placeholder text
A fairly simple way to educate users and a small addition that could bring a huge increment to the findability of payment receipts.
Date picker
A portal to the past and the fastest way to old receipts. To gradually give control and progressively disclosure the information. I chose to make it a horizontal menu to keep Nubank’s consistency.
Category filter
Filter for experienced users. If you have a lot of transactions, you might want to break down your search to find things faster. The biggest challenge was to preserve the minimalistic aesthetic while adding more complexity to the screen.
Out with the old, in with the Nu
Navigate through the prototype. Brazil’s favorite banking app got a little smoother. You can also snap the QR code below to open it in your phone.
Next Steps
Run tests to validate the changes and iterate.
Perform a new quantitative research to uncover other pain points.
Thank you for reading! If you like my ideas please consider following me to stay updated on my lastest work.
Note: While stressing the app, I came across a minor bug that breaks navigation. If your search returns no result, you won’t be able to perform a new search.
Try it yourself if you’re a NuConta client: go into your Nubank account, roll down until the search icon appears and search for “rfr” for example. Now perform a new search. Did you manage to do it? Leave a comment down below and let me know.