Mark Law - Mox Bank App

Mox

Brand, Visual & Experience Design

Role: Head of Design

The Challenge

Hong Kong has been on the frontline of innovation and distribution for many years. However, the banking experience has remained traditional and become outdated compared to other countries. In 2020 Hong Kong planned to issue a digital banking license for the first time. Standard Charted wanted to use the opportunity to build a first-of-its-kind digital bank, built from the ground up to be truly virtual, and capture a younger market.

I lead a team of 6 product designers and 1 UX writer to research, define features, and design the mobile app experience.

The Process

Standard Chartered approached R/GA to design the brand, visual direction, and experience for the app, the sole way of experiencing the bank, as there will be no physical locations.

Research

We spent several weeks in Hong Kong interviewing local young adults building an understanding of their preferences and views towards established banks. It was obvious that people wanted a fresher, younger, and importantly ‘different’ brand if they were to bank with us. It needed to be a brand that represented opportunities. This formed the foundation and key insight for our brand.

3 key insights

Authentically Hong Kong

With the presence of foreign influence very real, local young bankers want a product that clearly feels local. Language, features, and even colours should feel very authentically Hong Kong.

For Me

Traditional banking products feel like they are developed for wealthy, older generations. The features, need to feel like they are designed for the younger generation, which means no technical, legacy banking terms.

Empathetic but ambitious

Hong Kong youth are very aware of how expensive their city can be. They find growing their money daunting, and many decide it's just not possible. Our apps needs to understand this, not talk over their concerns, but help them capture their ambitions and help them achieve their goals.

The brand was inspired by the bright lights of Hong Kong

Developing a Brand

Our name “Mox” reflects the endless opportunities we can create – Mobile eXperience; Money eXperience; Money X (multiplier), eXponential growth, eXploration. It’s something we define with our customers, together.

Designing the App

Features of our digital bank had to be different. We set about identifying key features that would be more in tune with how the user would want to save, spend, and shop.

Features of the app were broken down into Epics, divided between product teams, and then planned into agile sprints. During each sprint, we worked on several parts of the experience and included regular testing to validate the design.

Working rapidly, initially in wireframes as the design system was put together, we then started to build out flows with a growing library of components.

Prototyping & Testing

Working closely with the Mox team, we defined experiences that we believed would resonate with our target customer. We then created wireframes, and used these to test with users, and make quick updates.

Defining the Epics

After testing prototypes and shortlisting the priority we landed on the following Epics for the first version:

Onboarding, Dashboard, Search (Virtual Assistant), Transactions, Accounts, Virtual cards, Loans, Smart Insights, Rewards & Gamification, Investments, Savings rules, Notifications

Visual Design

We started to develop a Design Library as we worked on the wireframes. The design library and visual direction was influenced by the brand direction. Youthful, fun, with some edge, and much more lifestyle orientated than typical banks.

Bringing the strategy, brand, and epics together.

Eventually, we had the pieces. We divided the team into smaller squads. UX designers would pair with a Visual Designer and work through an Epic with a key Product Owner from the business.

A separate team was tasked with continuing to develop the Design System in paralell and maintaining the consistency and design standards across.