Corporate Account Onboarding Can Be Fun

The problem

The current account opening process was bewildering, lacking context to guide users and failing to provide a positive experience. Working independently, I gathered materials and resources to enhance my domain understanding. I collaborated closely with the client, setting up meetings to discuss and prioritise key changes to their corporate onboarding journey.

Overview of process

The first week involved collecting as much resources and material as possible for the brief. Towards the end of the week, I began defining the problem. The next week involved storyboarding a solution using low-fidelity wireframes. In the third week, I created a finished prototype.

Some of the tasks and activities I was involved with were:

■ Collecting and analysing existing materials (client brief, ideas, screenshots of existing UAT experience)

■ Looking at competitors

■ Interviewing external vendors to understand how their service integrates

■ Creating a high-level flow diagram to understand the current process

■ Arranging sessions with the client to try and understand the processes and requirements for opening an account better

■ Wireframing the journey so that we can identify content and order of screens

■ Playback interpretation of the service to the client through meetings

■ Designing and building an interacting prototype

Above, is a flow diagram with annotations of the proposed new onboarding experience with the rationale behind each decision.

Identifying verification challenges collaboratively

Capturing the details of third parties to verify their identity was a particularly troublesome part of the project. Without being a subject matter expert, it was difficult to know the exact requirements despite several meetings to discuss the purpose of this step. Ultimately, creating some assumptions and playing these back to the client proved useful. These were then easier for the client to correct and to shape my understanding of the problem. Another useful way to get a clearer picture of the problem was to propose some solutions despite not being overly confident in how it works. The client was able to quickly fill in the blanks or expose which parts of it were wrong. Therefore, it helped build my understanding of the problem and domain.

The outcome

By mapping the business requirements to the user journey, I created a cleaner and easier-to-understand onboarding experience. Above are some of the final designs I created for various stages of the journey.

I found that getting started can be hard sometimes. Allow yourself time to start and introduce ways to stimulate questions, curiosity and excitement.

The biggest challenge was understanding the particulars of the process and requirements. The challenge to transforming a digital experience is understanding the process's necessities and why it's needed and displaying it through the lens of a user. But often or not, the expert subject matters can be so close to their own domain, so it's hard to get the right answers. Through enough prodding, though, you slowly learn more and more.