Generative AI powered business banking

Posted on April 13, 2025April 22, 2025 by Andrew Robert Burgess

Using Generative AI to enhance business banking signups and credential checks

Introduction

My role

Lead UX Architect

Team

Junior Designer
Development Team

Stakeholders

Design Principal
Subject Matter Experts
Customer bid team

Timeline

3rd-7th March 2025 (1 week)

Overview

Leading the design in a bid for a British bank who wanted to see a proof of concept where Generative AI could be used to improve the Business Banking KYC process. This would include both journeys from the customer perspective of signing up for a new account, and the employee perspective of perfuming checks on the customer and their company. Our design would be turned into a working demonstration by developers and then presented to the client.

Highlights

The start screen for the Business Banking signup process

A photo of a computer screen showing the Employee dashboard, giving details of a company that is being checked — The employee dashboard performing KYC checks on a company

The Challenge

“In a week, create a proof of concept that demonstrates how AI can be used to improve the Business Bank signup and KYC checking process.”

Understanding the problem

Getting insights from experts

Having had previously worked on Dun & Bradstreet’s Risk Analytics KYS platform, I had some contextual understanding, but felt that it was better to have some more in-depth insights
As we had no users to work with and limited time, my company provided time with two subject matter experts, who helped explain the KYC process in detail, which was invaluable, as we had little insight into the employee processes involved, as well as provide some suggestions as to where we could make improvements.

Auditing existing systems

As a starting point, we conducted a UX Audit of the existing business banking signup process (which doesn’t involve an AI assistant at the moment)
- Some key points we discovered:
  - The process was kept direct, and free from distractions, encouraging the user to focus on the task, and see it through to completion
  - Exploring the different paths in the product, we found that the visual identity switched when following some options, which gave a disjointed feel to the experience.
  - Of course, we could only go so far in the journey without actually starting the application process
  - But also, we noticed the reminders from the bank to try and encourage us to come back and finish our application were missing any ability to decline or unsubscribe.
We also evaluated the information provided by Companies House and the APIs of other data brokers, so that we could understand how providing a company number could provide important data for the KYC process.

An images of two rows of post-it notes in Figjam, an online planning software, showing the user journeys between the customer applying for the account and the employee checking their details, and how I could analyse the planning — The blue customer and tan employee user journeys, with notes and arrows showing information flow and interaction

Exploring the problem

Using everything we had learned above, I was able to map out user journeys for both the Customers and Employees, demonstrating just how the two overlapped, and how information and messaging could be transmitted from one side to the other.
With this process, I could then interrogate and refine my ideas, making notes, identifying potential problems, and highlighting opportunities for improvement
By then presenting my ideas to my colleagues I could get their perspectives and feedback for further refinement.
Some key points emerged from this work:
- We wanted to make the signup process as simple and easy for the Customer, where each step is clear and easy to follow
- We should also understand that it may not be entirely linear – Customers might have questions they want to ask, or may need to leave the process and come back again, so we needed to build in affordances for these, as well as reminders to encourage them to return (with the option to abandon the process, if they wished)
- Customers expect a quick response, and therefore it was important to ensure that the system would remind employees and help them to keep to these expectations.

Leveraging AI to improve the process

Researching AI capabilities, we identified several ways in which AI could be used to enhance the process we were building:
Primarily, Generative AI provides a “concierge” experience, being able to not just guide the Customer through the process, but to also pivot and answer questions during that process, and adapt the process to suit the needs of the user
This experience could be extended to all communications, and with an Agent-style design, be made to feel like a dedicated representative, responding to the needs of the Customer individually (as opposed to the common customer experience of being passed between representatives, which can be a point of frustration for many Customers).
This could also be applied to the Employee experience, making them aware of service-level deadlines, helping them to prioritise work, as well as being able to answer questions around the process and findings.
The key value of the AI on the Employee side would be to scan documents and data to flag keywords and issues, presenting them to the Employee for human review. Used well, this could save considerable time.

The Customer Journey

A screenshot of an email sent to the user to prove that they are the holder of their email address — Email checking and a link to return to the signup process

Starting the journey

Creating our solution, we began with the Customer journey:

We redesigned the Business banking homepage to provide an introduction to the AI Agent, as well as provide a quick summary of the signup process and what would be required for it. This ensures that the Customer is aware of the agent, knows what to expect, and everything that they will need before they begin.
Once they start the process, the Agent introduces themselves, and are presented as an anthropomorphic character, to further encourage feelings of human relatability and equate the experience with that of a human counterpart. A progress bar is also provided, so that the Customer can see all the parts of the process, and understand at any given time where they are on it.
The AI Agent starts by asking for simple details, including the Customer’s name, email address and telephone number. This not only provides a way of starting the conversation, but also allows the system to start the checking process by verifying the contact details, and ensures that they have a method of contacting the customer, should they abandon the process at any point.
When the user receives communications from the system, they are made to resemble the AI Agent, reinforcing the idea of a dedicated representative. The messages not only contain verification codes, but also provide a link back to the conversation, providing an extra route for the Customer to return to the process at any point, and are encouraged to keep the message for that very purpose.
The system retains the place in the process, so that the Customer can rejoin from where they left off. The chat history is also kept, so that the Customer can always scroll up and remind themselves of what was previously said.
During the process, the Agent can check for errors, ensuring that details such as telephone numbers and email addresses are correct, providing real-time feedback and encouraging the user to check and make corrections.

Company details

After the initial contact details, the Customer is then asked for details about their company. They only need to confirm three details; type of company, size of turnover, and company number. With these details, the system can get everything else it needs from the Companies House API.
As the process takes the form of a chat conversation, the Agent can not only guide the Customer through the application process, but can also answer questions at any stage along the way, including clarifications on terminology. The Agent should be trained to answer questions around a specific list of subjects, but should always be provided with limitations, to prevent it from saying anything that is not authorised. If a Customer asks a question that is not on the specific list, the Agent is trained to respond that it can’t answer the question, but can put them in touch with a human colleague to answer it for them, which would happen inside the same chat window, for a seamless experience.
Once the Customer has provided the company number, the Agent provides them with a synopsis of the basic information from the Companies House API, so that the Customer can verify their company. This also includes details of the company officers, confirmation of which will lead them on to the Documents stage of the process.

A screenshot of an email which has been sent to an officer of the company, asking them to help provide documents for the application process — Emailing officers to request that they provide documentation

A screenshot of a mobile phone interface scanning the photo page of a passport — Showing OCR scanned information from a passport

Providing documents

After providing typed information, the Documents stage is a little more complex, as it involves not just the Customer to provide information, but also the company officers who will also have access to the account. The process starts by asking if the Customer can provide everything themselves, or if they need the Agent to contact the officers on their behalf. If so, the Customer can then provide contact details for the officers, again for communication and verification purposes.
As before, the communications from the system maintain the feel that everything is coming from the Agent, reinforcing the impression of a dedicated representative. The messaging provides an introduction from the Agent, that mentions the Customer to provide reassurance of validity. The user can then follow the link on the message to provide their document details.
The process can work on both mobile and desktop devices, making use of the camera or webcam to capture the document for verification. The process starts with a page the introduces the verification process, ensuring that they know what’s required before they begin.
The screen then switches to a camera view for the user to show the document. The screen checks the positioning of the document, indicating the correct positioning in each corner and the legibility of the text through OCR. When the Officer pushes the button, both the image and the text is captured, so that both can be verified by a human.
The final stage of the document process involves the Officer verifying the captured information.

The Employee journey

A screenshot of a dashboard showing different companies that the employee has to review, with the AI helping them to prioritise their work — The AI helps to highlight critical work, and prioritise workloads

KYC checks overview

The KYC dashboard gives the Employee an overview of all of the checks that they need to perform, as well as a reference of previous checks
Each KYC check has an overview of issues that the AI has located, as well as the number of issues that have been reviewed, and any flags that have been raised for Compliance.
The system reminds the Employee of checks which are getting close to service agreement limits, or going over them
The AI Agent helps the Employee to prioritise work, or if it looks like they are not going to finish it on time, request a transfer of the work over to a colleague.

A screenshot overview of a company, showing company details, people and financial details for the employee to review — Company overview, showing personnel and financial details for employee review

Company overview

The Company overview shows the three sections where checks have been carried out – Company Details, People and Financial Records
- By breaking this into three sections, Employees can check one part before information has been submitted for the others.
The same issues found, issues reviewed and flags raised are shown for each component of the overview, as well as a summary Red/Amber/Green status
The AI Agent provides a summary of findings, and can guide the Employee through each section, highlighting areas which require review.

A screenshot showing specific details around the personnel of a company and associated people — Personnel details and associated names for review

Officer details

The Person details provide an overview of the officers in the company, as well as people who have been found to be associated with them, allowing the Employee to check any potential Compliance issues such as Politically Exposed Persons, or those on Watchlists, identified through data house APIs.

Aftermath

The designs above was made into a working proof of concept, which led to a successful bid with the client bank.

Retrospective

Project takeaways:

Overall, I feel like we made a good effort within the limited time we had for the bid, understanding the context and identifying some key points which helped develop an approach which would have made for a better product
Of course, I would have liked more time to research and test my ideas in more depth, and feel that if I had been able to do so, I would be able to create an even better outcome
I’m also happy to have had the chance to understand and apply AI to a project, recognising its benefits and limitations to enhance the KYC process.

The problem with “X”

Posted on July 25, 2023August 9, 2023 by Andrew Robert Burgess

The problem with “X”

Yesterday morning, the announcement came from Elon Musk that he has rebranded Twitter, the social media app that he bought for $44 million in October 2022, as “X”, to align it with X Corp, the parent company belonging to Musk. Musk has stated that he would like to turn Twitter, now X, into an “everything app” or a “super app” inspired by apps like WeChat, the standard social media app in China that allows users to access services such as hailing taxis, paying bills, ordering at restaurants and more. As Vox says, “for some people in China, WeChat is the internet”, and it’s easy to see that if Musk could build the social network into something like that for its customer base, then that could well be a very lucrative and powerful platform. However, there are some fundamental points which I feel that he may well have overlooked in his excitement over such an ambitious venture.

The first point is what everyone knows, namely that Twitter/X is not doing well financially since the acquisition. Musk’s policy of free speech absolutism, allowing previously banned individuals such as Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump back on (despite the latter not accepting the offer, due to his having set up Truth Social, his own social media network), has caused concern in advertisers, who have stopped advertising on the platform in significant numbers. It seems that the diminished advertising revenue, along with failed money-raising efforts such as Twitter Blue, don’t seem to be able to cover the estimated £1.2 billion per year interest cost on the original $44bn raised to buy the platform in the first place. What’s more, with Musk laying off significant parts of the workforce, and being seemingly unable to pay for servers and office space, it really does seem that Musk is failing to right the ship, and turn the platform he bought into a viable business model.

Secondly, from a design perspective, it really seem that sourcing your logo from a competition on your platform may not have been the best of ideas. Stories are already coming out that the logo resembles an existing Monotype font and a Unicode character, and that Meta might have copyright claims on the name. Even the attempt to remove the Twitter name from the headquarters failed as police halted the work, as permits had not been secured for equipment on the street, leaving the sign saying “er”, with Larry the bird still flying above it.

However, ignoring all that, the fundamental thing that I feel that Musk may have overlooked in his excitement about what he can do with Twitter/X is to focus more on what WeChat, the “everything app” that he’d like to emulate, actually is, and how it works. If you’d like a good deep dive into how WeChat (and similar apps like AliPay) work to combine services, the video below is a really good example:

The fundamental reason as to why apps like WeChat work well is that the Chinese people accept a high level of government surveillance in their country, and therefore are more willing to allow tech companies that same level of insight into their privacy as well. I’ve had friends and colleagues come back from visits to China, amazed at just how well the experience of these apps works, but also acknowledging that the likelihood of people willing to agree over here in the West to this level of insight and surveillance might be more difficult. Combine this with the decreasing level of trust that Musk is causing in Twitter, and you can already see the problems that he’s going to have in making this a reality. Even if he does manage to get all the relevant companies and protocols, and build his everything app, will people use it? I heard a quite from Athena Kugblenu, a British comedian on the Paper Cuts podcast which rather summarised how I imagine people’s current attitudes towards the platform:

“It feels immensely hackable, I don’t even trust it to keep my DM’s safe… I feel that I’d pay for something with it, and then the next day there would be 17 people with my identity.”

It really does seem that Musk has quite the way to go to reinstate trust in the platform, as well as make it into the the “everything app” that he wants to be. Perhaps we might end up using it for its intended purpose in the future, hailing cabs and booking tables at restaurants, but given the current evidence, it really does feel like he’s got very excited about the prospect, much like he has with his other ventures, and not really thought about how or why it should be made, which can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

If you’d like my help in planning successful projects which people trust and love to use, please get in touch, and we can discuss your requirements.

Women’s Weeds: an audio experience

Posted on July 10, 2023October 1, 2024 by Andrew Robert Burgess

The Women's Weeds webpage with my custom CSS code beside it

Women’s Weeds: an audio experience

Last Friday saw the launch of my wife Romany’s exhibition, Women’s Weeds: the hidden history of women in medicine, at the Museum of the Home. Researched, written and created by her, the exhibition covers 600 years of history with four distinct themes; Witches, Herbal Healers, Colonial Medicine and Victorian Feminists, and takes the form of an audio trail through the gardens of the museum. Visitors are encouraged to walk through the garden, where they can listen to Romany narrate her work through audio tracks, which can be accessed using a mobile device and headphones.

Romany asked for my help in putting together the webpage where people can access the audio tracks. She already has a WordPress site, Blackthorn and Stone, where she shares her work, and so, in order to give her the ability to make changes easily, and encourage people to explore her site further, she asked for the Women’s Weeds page to be part of the site. As her project was supported by an Arts Council England grant, as well as hosted by the Museum, it is important for her to be able to track visitors to the page, as well as seeing which audio tracks they listened to. We managed to achieve this by using the combination of the analytics on her WordPress site, as well as using the Soundcloud analytics provided by her Soundcloud Pro account. Also, to access the page, I created a QR code using Bit.ly, which allowed users to quickly access the page using their phone cameras, and provided another way of tracking visitors. We even created the shortened link of bit.ly/womensweeds, in case visitors were not able to use their cameras.

A hand written sign in the garden of the Museum of the Home, reading "Herbal Healers 6" — One of the signs in the garden one the Museum of the Home, showing visitors which section of the exhibit that they should be listening to.

The page itself was built using a standard WordPress page, which provides a way for Romany to be able to make adjustments as she wishes, without having to engage in any coding. I then applied custom CSS, using the specific class that WordPress gives the page to define it from other pages, and optimise it for a phone interface, as this is the most likely thing that visitors will access the page with. We gave some careful thought to how visitors will interact with the page, and as it is quite a long project with twenty three sections, we needed to help users navigate between sections as easily as possible. I started by building the sections, and then providing a menu at the top with page links to jump to each section individually. At the bottom of each section, I provided a link back to the main menu, which helps visitors from unnecessary scrolling. We did think about having the link back to the menu as a floating box at the bottom of the screen, but opted for the simpler option of having a link at the bottom of each section, as a floating box could obscure information, and would be harder to cater for on different screen sizes.

The menu is provided with a map of the gardens beside it, so that it is easier to see and associate each section with the relevant part of the garden. The map was traced from an aerial view on Google Maps, in order to ensure proportions are correct, and the sections are picked out in which, so that they can be more easily seen, even when looking at a phone with glare from the sun. Each section also includes photos of the areas, so that visitors can see where they should be looking, and it also provides a visual representation of the gardens, allowing visitors who can’t access the Museum the ability to see visual context, even if they can’t be there.

The exhibit had a very successful launch this last Friday, on the 7th July, with Romany and the Museum Director, Sonia Solicari giving short introductions to the exhibition before encouraging everyone to explore the gardens and listen to the work (which you can see in a video below). Visitors found the page intuitive and easy to use, with one small issue of one person who tapped on the Soundcloud link, and though she was meant to be listening the the tracks from there, rather than from the page. With this feedback, I also ensured that there were clear instructions for people to tap the orange play button, to prevent them from the same confusion.

The exhibit will be in the gardens until the end of September, so if you’re ever in the Hoxton area of London, please do go and give it a look, or if you can’t why not go to the page, and you can at least experience it remotely.

If you’d like my help with designing and creating intuitive and enjoyable online experiences, please get in touch, and we can discuss your requirements.

An example of real-world delight

Posted on June 13, 2023October 1, 2024 by Andrew Robert Burgess

A photo of a receipt from Daisy, a restaurant in Margate, Kent, UK, showing information including weather, tides, trains, postcode and taxi details.

An example of real-world delight

A little while ago, a friend shared with me her receipt from a restaurant called Daisy in Margate, Kent. Rather than being anything about the food or cocktails there, my friend (who is also called Daisy) knew I would be interested because it was one of the best examples I’ve seen of what we in User Experience call “delighters”, which can be the thing which can guarantee the success of your product, and even lift it above the competition.

To understand what delighters are, you have to know about the Kano model, a theory for product development devised in by Noriaki Kano in the 1980s to define customer satisfaction. It groups product work around three main areas; basic needs, performance needs and delighters, corresponding to the way in which user perceive them. To summarise their meanings:

Basic needs are the absolutely must-have functions that a product must include in order to successfully address the needs of the user. An example of this would include having a seat on a bicycle, so that the user can sit on it. Not having these would constitute an abject failure in addressing the basic needs of the user.
Performance needs describe the continuing improvement of functionality in the product. In our bicycle analogy, this might include providing rubber grips on the handlebars so that the user can comfortably hold the handles absorbing shocks, and prevent their hands sliding off if they get sweaty. Not an absolute basic need, but a definite improvement that can become a fundamental expectation from that point.
Delighters are the extras which provide added value for users. For our bicycle, this could be the addition of mudflaps, so that the rider isn’t splashed with mud when riding off-road.

In building a project, it’s clear that addressing the basic needs of the user are fundamental for success. If you don’t have them, you will have omitted important must-have functionality, and that would prevent the user from achieving their most important tasks. However, once you have those basic needs identified, appreciation of what could bring extra value might well be what sets your product out from the competition.

These needs are recognised in the user research stage of the production process, as we speak to users about their experiences, and identify opportunities where we can help them with our work, sorting them into “must-haves” (basic needs) and “nice-to-haves” (delighters). Working with our project team, we can then use the combination of business needs, user needs and technological restrictions to define the shape of our solution, and produce something which satisfies those three, as well as hopefully giving space to include a few extras that delight our users, make them excited about our product, and increase sales and satisfaction.

(For clarity, the photo above is only part of the receipt, and just shows the delighters of information on weather, tide (Margate is on the South East cost of England, so this might help inform customers if they want to go for a stroll on the beach after their meal), train times, taxi phone number, and postcode so you can plan your own taxi home. Of course, I’ve omitted the part of the receipt that shows the actual basic needs of the cost of the meal, as that’s private to my friend.)

If you’d like my help with ensuring success in your products and teams, please get in touch, and we can discuss your requirements.

Miserichordia – a dark classical playlist

Posted on May 23, 2023May 23, 2023 by Andrew Robert Burgess

An illustration of a hooded figure playing a cello surrounded by a ring of candles in a cathedral.

Miserichordia – a dark classical playlist

Classical music has always inspired me, and I’ve often found it an excellent inspiration and accompaniment to my work. It was because of this that I put together a dark classical playlist named Miserichordia, which I’ve cultivated over time to include requiems, fugues and atmospherics from famous composers and film scores, to evoke that exquisite darkness found in classical music. Use it to help with your work, your reading, or even as something to inspire your own dark musings.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify, or stream it using the player below:

SkyNet isn’t the problem: How UX and AI can work together

Posted on April 4, 2023 by Andrew Robert Burgess

A Terminator style robot giving a presentation in front of a whiteboard with sticky notes and process diagrams

SkyNet isn’t the problem: How UX and AI can work together

Introduction

The recent rise in articles and opinion pieces around AI has led to some pretty odd claims, either saying that AI is here to take our jobs as UX designers, or even more dangerously, suggesting that AI can be used in place of proper user research. In this piece, I detail a discussion I had with another UX thought leader about ways in which we envisage AI could help UX designers, including:

Tasks that AI could do for us
Tasks that AI could help us with
Tasks that AI couldn’t help us with

Read “Why SkyNet isn’t the problem — how UX and AI can work together.” on Medium.

UX Theatre

Posted on January 25, 2023October 1, 2024 by Andrew Robert Burgess

Image of a theatre setting layout with empty chairs

A theatre, but no one’s there… Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

UX Theatre

Introduction

In my previous post, I stated that a number of large companies fail to follow user-centred production processes, and that by adhering to those processes, you can get ahead of a lot of the competition. As a way of providing more detail to my claims, I’m sharing a talk I previously gave on this very subject, how I discovered that it was enough of a common phenomenon that it actually had a name, how it affects more than just designers, and how everyone on a software production team can work to address it.

The user-centred production process

Everyone who has worked in a project team to produce something should be aware of the User Centred Production process, (also known as User Centred Design, but I prefer to call it a production process, so that it’s more inclusive to non-designers). It’s a valuable mechanism which ensures, by identifying and placing user needs at the centre of production decisions, the resulting product will be successful with users because it addresses those needs. This is a fundamental improvement on previous production methods, which would try and guess what users wanted, build and launch something to address that, and then adjust the product in the next version, or build something else, which could be very time consuming and costly.

The stages of the process are as follows:

Discovery – a collaborative exercise to define the aims and scope of the project, giving a rough idea of what is being achieved, and how it will be achieved
Research – conducting research with people who actually will or currently use the product, to gain insights around their requirements, and ensure that what you plan to build addresses their needs
Analysis – reviewing what’s discovered during research, highlighting opportunities and problems, identifying user types and their interactions, and noting further questions and assumptions for further research
Prototyping – quickly creating low fidelity solutions, doing just enough to be able to challenge assumptions and questions, and start a process of slowly improving fidelity as understanding grows, aiming towards a finished product.
User testing – letting users try the prototype, testing assumptions, asking questions, and providing feedback for further development as part of a “build, measure, learn” cycle.
Launch – the product can now reach a “minimum viable product” level where it’s ready to ship, and can be widely released. The “build, measure, learn” process can continue, for further refinement and to address further issues.

So why do companies get this wrong?

As previously mentioned, I’ve worked with a number of companies who fail to follow this process, and there are various reasons why this happens. I’ve included them below, with some actual quotes from project leads, justifying why they’re not following the process properly:

Lack of appreciation of the value of the process

“I’ve been in this industry for 15 years, I know what users want, so we don’t need to waste time on research.”

“We don’t need to conduct research, let’s just build something and test it.”

Project leads in this example assume that they don’t need research, and that they can save time and effort by not including it in the production process. This may well be down to a lack of experience of how good research can inform a project. I’ve always found during research that not only does it identify basic needs, which the people above may well be aware of, but there is always something which you didn’t expect – a new discovery, an added benefit, or a “gotcha” moment that changes your perspective. These are impossible to predict, and understanding them can mean the difference between a functional product and a truly great product. Also, in the second quote, by not conducting research before you start building something, you run the risk of building entirely the wrong thing, and wasting time and effort by having to revise it heavily, or scrap it altogether. Research before production ensures that you have a decent understanding of user needs, and have identified opportunities and problems before you begin.

Lack of interest in engaging with users

“We don’t really have connections with our customers, so it’s going to be hard getting people to talk to.”

“Our users are far too busy to engage in research.”

“We would get you some users to talk to, but Sales are far too busy.”

Project teams are often distanced from Sales and Customer Relations in larger companies, and this can sometimes be used as apathy to not engage in user research. I actually heard the first quote while working on a scientific database product, and I detail in my case study about how I had to go out myself and find research candidates, because the project leads were unable to. This friction is usually the cause of project leads being unable to provide links, or scared that if they do, the research will harm sales in some way. A lot of my experience runs counter to this, and having users take part in research, they feel invested in the process and that their requirements are being individually addressed. This can actually help with Sales efforts, and gain useful knowledge that will be beneficial to them.

Time constraints

“I’ve promised that we’ll deliver this product in (x) weeks. We haven’t got time to research or test with users.”

Project leaders stating they haven’t enough time for research indicate more lack of appreciation of the benefits of research. They may not have given time to conduct research because of an adherence to antiquated production techniques that aren’t user centred, or they don’t include time for research because they don’t see its value. Projects should always include time to conduct research as a fundamental part of the user-centred production process, and the concept that research takes a lot of time can be quelled by drawing up research schedules to demonstrate that they fit in the overall project roadmap. Ideally, Agile projects should include continual research, which allows some degree of running research alongside production, although this could introduce the need for some rapid changes of direction if new discoveries are made.

Pressure to deliver

“We can’t pause production to conduct research, we’ve got to start building something immediately!”

It’s understandable that projects have deadlines, as value and progress need to be demonstrated, but the need to build something quickly indicates again that time has not been allocated for research properly. Research should be an important part of initial project planning, and the understanding of its value and the need for allocating time should be made clear to all participants and stakeholders from the start. By doing this, you will ensure that stakeholders will ask to see research discoveries, rather than product progress.

Discovering UX Theatre

After seeing these patterns, I came across a number of articles which indicated that I wasn’t alone in this situation:

A series of headlines from online articles stating that UX has a problem that it is not being adhered to correctly — A series of headlines from online articles stating that there’s a fundamental problem with how UX is being practiced in some companies.

These articles led me to the discovery that this term “UX Theatre” had been coined by Tanya Snook in 2018, describing it as:

“the application of any sort of design methodology without including a single user in the process, or including users but merely for show.”

As the my experiences above show, this describes the situation perfectly, and I was even delighted to find that Tanya has not only produced a series of useful blog posts about it, but even a poster to help identify and deal with the situation. I’m greatly indebted to her for such excellent and helpful work.

How does UX Theatre affect projects?

As we’ve previously discussed, missing out on research means that you could start building the wrong thing, but what if you missed out on other parts of the process?

Missing out on analysis (which often happens if you don’t research, as there’s nothing to analyse) means that you fail to identify opportunities and problems before you start building solutions.
Missing out on prototyping means that you don’t iterate on your design, and the user doesn’t see it before launch.
Missing out on testing (which happens if you don’t prototype) means that you increase the risk of the product failing upon launch

This last point is best described in a diagram I saw in a talk by Josh Sieden, co-author of the excellent Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams, which has been a fundamental part of my UX learning. In the last slide of his talk, he included this diagram, which describes how continual iterative testing minimises risk in a product production process:

A graph showing how continual production without testing increases risk, whereas each instance of testing reduces the risk back to zero each time — A graph showing how continual production without testing increases risk (red line), whereas each instance of testing reduces the risk back to zero each time (blue line).

This helps explain the value of iterative testing (a subject I’ve written about before), and how it’s an important part of the user-centred production process, a process which, as indicated above, should be followed fully.

So, what can we do to address this?

The responsibility to identify and address UX Theatre doesn’t just stand with designers, as, demonstrated above, it affects the whole production process and the team. It is here that I invoke one of my favourite film quotes, the inimitable Jeff Goldblum playing Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park:

Everyone in a production team should be able to challenge the way in which a project is being conducted, and ask for more information about how decisions are being made. To that end, here are some things you can ask:

Check with your team that they’re building the right thing (research)

Have they provided research and analysis documentation and thinking, to justify their production decisions? Are they based on conversations with actual users, or just assumed?
Did they write their “as a user…” statements based upon actual research discoveries, or are they just making them up out of what they think is right?
What other assumptions are being made?

Check with your team that you’re building the thing right (testing)

Is the project following an iterative “build, measure, learn” process, building a Minimum Viable Product, just high enough fidelity to test, and then rebuild based upon the discoveries made while testing?
Or are they building a Minimum Sellable Product, which won’t be tested with users until it is launched?

If you can, make sure the project is properly structured

If you’re part of the initial planning of a project, ensure that the structure of the project includes each of the stages of the user-centred production process above.
If people question why these sections should be included, provide examples of ways that each stage is useful, and explanations of what could happen if they are omitted.

Conclusion

By identifying and preventing UX Theatre being practised, you’re achieving a number of things:

Preventing wasting production time and expense by working in an iterative method, being able to identify problems and address them proactively
Creating products that are more successful, and not only address the needs of users, but also identify ways in which to delight them.
Reducing frustration in project teams, providing more opportunities for them to learn about users (which can prove useful in future projects), and making products which demonstrate success that they can proud of.

Thank you for reading this through, and for helping to make products and project better!

If you’d like me to help with ensuring success in your products and teams, please get in touch, and we can discuss your needs.

Simple, but true.

Posted on January 23, 2023January 25, 2023 by Andrew Robert Burgess

Simple but true

Years ago, when I started out in UX design, I thought that the experts in my field had all this arcane knowledge around UX, knowing all these tricks about how to handle projects and how to make products the very best that they can be.

You know what over a decade working in UX has taught me?

Listening to your customers;
Understanding their collective and different needs; and
Ensuring that what you’re making addresses those needs;

is enough to put you ahead of most of your competitors.

This simple premise is one that everyone in a company should be aware of, and yet I’ve witnessed a number of large influential companies out there who still don’t manage it. If you’d like me to help your company, let’s talk.

Building a user-led design strategy for an energy commodities trading company

Posted on January 16, 2023November 11, 2024 by Andrew Robert Burgess

Building a proactive design strategy, demonstrating value through user intelligence

Introduction

This case study includes

My role

Head of UX

Team

2 UI Designers
Business Analyst
Development, Research Analysis, Marketing and Data Teams

Stakeholders

CEO
Head of Technology
Head of Marketing
In-house traders

Users

In-house traders
Traders, Researchers and other experts from major energy companies
Investors

Timeline

April 2022 – January 2023 (10 months)

Overview

The company have an established and successful energy commodities trading arm, and were looking to leverage their expertise in the industry to build out their technology offering based around their in-house trading software, and use it to widen their market share and appeal to major energy companies.

Highlights

“ Developing a product strategy that leverages industry knowledge to demonstrate value to a wider audience”

A photo close-up of a computer screen showing trading information arranged to assist traders predict behaviours — Example of a trading interface

Two side-by-side photos of a phone receiving notifications about trading events, and viewing the trading interface to see behaviours of a trading product — Traders receive notifications about developments in the behaviour of a trading product, and are able to view developments on their phones screen, keeping hem updated while away from their desk

Context and goal

The company had established themselves as a successful trader and broker within the energy commodity derivatives space, including producing their own software for trading in oil derivatives. Their aim was to increase their technology offering, leveraging output from their successful Research, Data and Media teams to increase appeal and buy-in from their customer base, which included major energy companies, as well as traders and brokers within the commodities derivatives markets. My goal was to identify ways in which we could increase that appeal, whilst building out the design team to support both existing projects as well as new initiatives.

The Challenge:

Create a way for the company to leverage their considerable domain expertise and demonstrate value to customers to increase revenue, and scale the technology side of the company from its current start-up state.

Building the foundation

Devising an approach

To approach the challenge outlined above, I recognised that we had an opportunity to develop a design strategy that understood the value of what the different parts of the company offered, and leveraged and understanding of user needs to develop a competitive advantage for the product and the company.
This approach was agreed by the CEO and CTO, with the caveat that it should not remove design support from the existing products and teams, and it became clear that I needed to build out the design team to ensure support was provided while I focussed on the new company and product design strategy.

Creating a design team

As the current products were fairly mature, they mostly required support in the creation of UI elements, and so I felt it best to hire two UI Designers, who could start by supporting the existing teams, and then be brought into the new product work later on.
I hired the two UI designers using Lou Adler’s Performance based hiring process, focussing upon expectations rather than a laundry list of required skills, which would help appeal to a more diverse set on candidates, and help balance out the office.
I oversaw the process myself, liaising with recruiters, conducting interviews and organising interviews between the candidates and other members of the company.
We used phone interviews reviewing CV information to screen possible interests, inviting them in for a face-to-face interview and task for the next stage, and finishing with a meeting with the CTO.
Through this process, we successfully hired our two designers, who I then oversaw working for the product teams, checking in daily on product work, and directing designs to ensure that they followed branding and overall strategy.

Creating a user-based design strategy

Before work could start on defining the new product, I needed to raise awareness and demonstrate the value of what I was doing, and get buy in from senior members of the company.
I started by devising a research repository, which would act as a single source that everyone in the company could access in order to see my progress. I took the company Confluence wiki, which had previously been separated into two sections (as product teams for the trading and brokerage arms had been separated into two), and ensured that there was a part of the wiki that everyone in the company could access.

Research

I then started by conducting research with internal traders and brokers, as well as members of the research and sales team to gain a bigger picture and gain a wider understanding of the market before moving on to external users.
During my research, I would write up transcripts of my interviews, summarising them into key observations, which would then be posted onto the wiki. This way, I could then quickly share those observations as insights with stakeholders in order to generate interest in my work through weekly update emails, and encouraging discussion of those observations during meetings.
My observations covered not just insights for future products, but also providing intelligence that could inform strategic decisions, supporting the work of management, market intelligence, sales, marketing and more.
Once I had conducted research with different types of users, I could the use the insights from different individuals within each user type to create personas to sum up those findings, as well as user journeys to explain the work processes which they followed. These were points of focus to understand the differing needs of each types of user, as well as opportunities for people to think of further questions, and identify areas which could be improved, as part of a continual exercise of understanding and development of ideas.

A single user journey, indicating how the user interacts with the software — Combining the separate user journeys into one (blue notes), and then identifying opportunities (green notes) or further questions (red notes)

Discoveries

Insights gained from research with users included:

Product awareness: a number of traders interviewed expressed lack a knowledge of the platform or the company’s other offerings
Reticence: many traders still used Excel sheets to track price movements, which, although unwieldy, provided them with the ability to customise the data they worked with
Varied sources: as part of their work, users needed to consult a range of different sources or data and news, as well as communication channels. These often got quite complex and hard to keep track of
Customisation: the majority of users interviewed expressed an interest in only one commodity or specific markets, and wanted the ability to tailor their view to show just the areas they were interested in.
Staying informed: traders, brokers and other users expressed a need to be able to keep up with trends and changes, not just in the office, but also while on the move, being told of changes in prices as well as the events in markets and geopolitics that caused those changes.

Solutions

Following the discoveries above, I worked with senior stakeholders to develop a product strategy which would continue to provide value in the short term, whilst also working on the longer term goal of developing their main trading platform.

Showing data value early

We felt that product awareness was one of the above discoveries that we could address with less effort and maximum impact, as well as use to demonstrate value. One way to generate interest quickly was to leverage the proprietary market data which the company produced, which when demonstrated to users could then underpin the value of the trading platform we were producing.

In order to demonstrate this data, we needed a way for users, including those less technically minded, to be able to access it easily. As many users already used large Excel sheets to pull in data for trading analysis, then we could demonstrate it to them, and they could even pull it into their own trading sheets later on using a subscription-based API.

We worked with our development teams to create an Excel plugin where users could select data streams in markets relevant to their interests, as well as formatted in the way they preferred. This approach also began to address the user requirement for customisation, allowing the user to select the data they were interested in, and only have to pay for that, in contrast to previous approaches where users were provided with information in all markets for a flat subscription fee, which they would then filter down in the app.

This was provided as a free trial for a couple of weeks, with further access available for a price. We also designed and created a promotional page where users could be directed to for information via promotional videos and testimonies, and online signup reducing the need for any manual onboarding.

Part of a web page promoting the API service with the still of a video showing an Excel screen — Part of the promotional page we built for the API, giving quotes from previous users and a run through of how easy it was to import and work with the data in Excel. We offered a trial period, and then users to customise and pay for the data streams that they were interested in.

Thanks to the efforts of our Sales team, the Excel plugin and API helped demonstrate to a wide user base the value of our data, and generated interest in our work on improving our trading platform.

Combining and customising information

Following our success with the Excel plugin and API, we then wanted to adapt the awareness and customisation concepts to our plans for the trading platform. We identified that these could be combined with two other discoveries, namely varied sources and staying informed, where we could bring in other services the company provided to demonstrate value.

Through conversations with users, we identified that while the data was useful, understanding the geopolitical, social and other reasons behind short and long-term trends is vital to being able to predict market behaviour. Therefore, we could use the high-quality market research produced by our in-house team to augment the value of the data, which would align behaviours with world events, to provide a holistic view of the customised information that the user subscribed to.

This also meant we could offer an adaptive pricing model, providing further value to the user by ensuring that they only paid for the information and data that they were interested in, in place of the previous model where users paid a flat fee for the entire service.

Diagram showing a concept around combining previously separate services into a combined information service that users can customise to the markets they are interested in — The principle behind combining the data from different sources, and then providing it as different streams that were tailored to the user’s needs and interests, from different markets to different ways of consuming and using the information.

A “dawn to dusk” service

As well as choosing the energy products that were relevant to them and the information streams they wanted to receive, we studied their working patterns to understand just how they wanted to consume the information, and how we could best provide it to them.
It was this way that we devised the “dawn to dusk” service, which provided a series of channels and ways of obtaining information throughout the day that Traders could choose to fit their own requirements. These included:
- A responsive view to the trading desktop, allowing users to access information on smaller devises, with information prioritised for “quick check” (mobile) or “lean back” (tablet) approaches (even adapting to smaller desktop windows), taking their preferred channels and information streams with them on the go.
- Notifications via inbuilt application, or on WhatsApp channels, alerting them to changes, or providing communication with other Traders or Brokers.

Predictive models

Using the data from our controlling share of the market, our teams also devised a way to turn them into predictive modelling, using machine logic to predict likely movements within a market.
This prediction model showed the probability of various paths, which informed users of the safety of their trading bids.

Aftermath

Following some reviews of the company, the decision was made to downgrade the software production team, and my ideas were shelved in preference for a more pared-down approach. Despite this, I am very proud of the progress I made, and grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate my ability to adapt to an industry I previously had little understanding of, as well as identify value quickly to stakeholders to help champion our efforts.

Retrospective

Project takeaways:

I managed to establish a proactive design team, who worked alongside product development teams to ensure that strategic decisions were based upon evidence from user and business intelligence
This also challenged the culture of C-level executives changing direction every few weeks, leading to more direction and reduced stress for product teams
While the company decided not to continue with my plans for the product, they said that they felt I had done some excellent work, and I had provided them with a good template for future product developments, some of which have actually been adopted since I left the company.
I also feel that if this work had been continued, it would have provided a highly competitive advantage in an industry which had been lacking in innovation.

Making your LinkedIn profile work for you

Posted on January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 by Andrew Robert Burgess

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

Making your LinkedIn profile work for you

I recently came across Katie Jacquez’s highly useful post I’m a designer at LinkedIn, here are 4 tips to attract recruiter with your profile. This post provides a valuable insight into how recruiters search for profiles, and how you can tune your profile to work for you, merely by adjusting the Headline, About and Skills sections. I’ve been constantly frustrated in the past with the number of recruiters on LinkedIn who approach me, asking if I’m interested in roles which have little to do with my skillset, and I’ve previously put it down to their use of keywords to find me, and their inability to actually bother to actually read my profile. Turns out that yes, recruiters are time-poor and do resort to finding people using keywords, but you can control those keywords and messaging to ensure that you get more useful offers.

I’d previously worked with my Headline and About sections, but Katie’s piece helped me to even focus further on the initial messages I wanted to convey to recruiters who only had time to scan those sections. The real power, however, comes in the Skills section, as this acts as the central resource for keywords by which recruiters search for viable candidates for their roles. I had previously passed it off as not very useful, and had filled it with various things I was good at, as well as some things which I was passable at, but I felt helped pad out my experience. It was only after reading the post that I realised that perhaps the reason why I had recruiters coming to me with development jobs in Python or C++ was because I had some time ago stated I knew a bit of JavaScript (a mistake, as I’m still not terribly good at it), which caused the recruiters to assume that I was interested in working with other languages. What’s more, looking at the order of the skills on my list, I realised that I didn’t have the ones I wanted to show off the most at the top, and there wasn’t really an order of preference. No wonder I kept on getting confused recruiters, asking if I had experience in conducting user research, when that was languishing lower down my list!

By making these simple changes, I managed to greatly improve the quality of responses from recruiters, with one of them even yesterday complementing me on how comprehensive and useful she found my profile. Of course, there are still those who don’t bother to consider my level of experience and offer me junior design roles, or care to read the first line of my About section that states I only add people I’ve worked with, but at least I haven’t been offered another coding job since I made the changes.