Wealthsimple - Empathy Map

Design task overview

• Selected Financial Platform: Mobile Banking Application
• Product Name: Wealthsimple
• Device Type: Smartphone

User research

To gather insights for the empathy map, we will employ various user research methods such as in-depth interviews and usability testing.

The focus will be on understanding the experiences, pain points, needs, and behaviors of the target audience, which in this case are everyday users of mobile banking applications.

Target audience

1. Age Group: 20-55
2. Profession: Students and professionals
3. Tech Savviness: From novice to tech-savvy Users
4. Location: Urban areas

Research methods

1. In-depth interviews: Conduct in-depth interviews with 5 users to understand their experiences, preferences, and frustrations.
2. Usability testing: Observe 5 users as they interact with their mobile banking apps to identify usability issues and needs.

Insights gathered

1. Performance issues: Users deal with slow performance, freezing, and crashes, especially during key actions like verifying ID or checking charts. This causes frustration and interrupts their financial activities.
2. Trust and reliability concerns: Functions like photo ID verification or notifications result in crashes or unexpected logouts. This affects trust in the platform's stability and professionalism.
3. Chart usability problems: Interacting with line graphs and charts is buggy and unintuitive, especially near screen edges. This impacts users' ability to analyze stocks and make informed decisions.
4. Desire for better support and feedback channels: Users feel unsupported when troubleshooting persistent issues. They want more responsive customer support and a clear, built-in way to report bugs or technical problems.
5. Positive outlook on trading features: Users are motivated to use the platform as part of their financial journey with how trades and options are handled, indicating that the core features are valuable when working properly.
6. Retention at risk: Frustration with bugs and poor performance is pushing some users to consider switching to another platform.
7. Device-related inconsistencies: Users report different experiences depending on their device (mobile and desktop), leading to unpredictability in app behavior.

Gains

1. Accessible trading features: Users appreciate its trading capabilities, including options.
2. Improved experience: Some users notice progress in app performance compared to earlier versions, showing potential for user retention.
3. Financial empowerment: Users want to grow their investments and improve their financial knowledge.
4. Hope for fixes: Despite issues, users stick around, showing a belief that the app can get better.
5. Engaged user base: Users are actively trying to explore features and offer feedback, signaling high engagement.

Pains

1. Performance instability: Frequent app crashes, freezes, and slowdowns disrupt user tasks and lead to frustration.
2. Trust issues: Failures during sensitive steps like identity verification reduce confidence in the app’s reliability.
3. Frustrating chart interactions: Charts are difficult to interact with, especially near screen edges, affecting usability.
4. Lack of effective support: Lack of clear ways to report issues or get help leaves users feeling unsupported.
5. Consideration of alternatives: Persistent technical problems are causing users to consider switching to other platforms.

Conclusion

The empathy map helped us spot key areas to improve in the mobile banking app. Fixing bugs, making the app more reliable, and improving tricky features like charts are important to reduce frustration.

At the same time, making it easier for users to grow their money and explore new tools adds real value. These insights will help guide our design so the app is more useful, trusted, and enjoyable to use.