Using Visualization to rethink the login process  Design Thinking for Innovation – Bas Klaas    Challenge   What is the point in providing great online banking tools, when the customer doesn’t log in?  In my company, a large bank, we encountered the problem that a large part of our  customers didn’t want to login online to use our banking tools.   Instead they went to our brick local branches, in far larger numbers than our competitors.  That was a big problem, because the costs of the physical banking activities at the local  branch are far greater than the costs of online banking activities, thus creating a large  competitive disadvantage.    In the past there had been efforts to optimize the login process. In the end this resulted in a  better technical login, but not an improvement in numbers of new customers that login. Our  challenge was described as: “improve the login process so customers who now go to the  local branch, use our online banking tools instead”.    Selection   How could we stay away from the trap of only marginally improving the login? We decided  to use Visualization. This would help us to get to the core problem and come up with more  creative ideas. We could then combine the insights and really leap forward.     Another major reason to use Visualization was to get all team members aligned: we wanted  to prevent that in an early stage ideas where shot down because they were deemed  technically too challenging. Visualization helps to create a shared starting point for idea  generation, and enforces the notion that we all are going to work together to create the best  possible solution.    Application  We used Visualization in two ways: in presenting the information that we gathered as a  starting point and to visualize possible solutions.    In gathering information, we asked team members for inspirational examples they knew of  login processes. We printed these examples and pinned them on the walls. We also  interviewed and made videos of customers who visited our local offices, and asked them  what they liked about their visit (we never mentioned our online channels). We showed  highlights of these video’s to the team and visualized key remarks. We also made prints of  the current login screens, to show what customers encounter when they login. We then  asked the team members to draw what our customer encounters both physically and  mentally when trying to login. That provided powerful insights in which areas we needed to  improve.    In a session with all team members, we went through all the input on the wall and let  everyone identify possible improvements and opportunities. These were written on post-its,  and grouped into key findings. We visualized the key findings to ensure that everyone had  the same understanding of the key finding and to make communication easier. Every team  member then identified the most important findings by placing stickers on them. That gave  everyone an insight in what the group thought was most important.

In visualizing the solution we split up our team members in small groups and asked them to  visualize their customer journey on paper. To help them, we prepared outlines of a  computer and mobile screen which they could use to fill in. When all groups had finished this  exercise, we pinned the papers on walls and focused our discussion on the unique elements.  That led for example to an interesting idea: add the local bank employees picture in the login  screen, because our customers value the familiarity of the local employee.  We then let the groups merge the different customer journeys into one, which we then  prototyped.    Insight  I discovered that process of sharing all information visually, and presenting the shared  insights visually is really effective to get everyone on  the same page and get everyone  involved in the process. It has the strong benefit that after the sessions, there really is a  shared understanding and drive to realize the solution together.   When I was just using words and group discussions without visualizations, often it appeared  that everyone was on the same page but after a few days I realized that was not the case.    Another insight I had was the importance of regularly summarizing visually, for instance  summarize the key findings. That really helped to ensure that everyone was still on board  and also eliminate any miscommunications that occurred when discussing together.     Approach  While the approach was successful, I believe that it would have been better to let  participants comment on their inspirational examples instead of just putting the examples  on a wall. Often it was one detail of the example that they found interesting, and that was  lost when we printed the example. Therefore the examples were barely used and referenced  in visualizing the solution.     I’ve also learned that it is really important not to focus too soon at the possible solution that  was presented by the visualizations, but also take note of the implications of the presented  solution. For instance, we should have broadened our visualization, and also interview the  already digital customers and visualize their needs. Then we would have taken the effects of  the change on our already online customers into account.    So, while visualization is a very useful and powerful tool to help achieve a shared outcome,  next time I will make sure that the scope of the project is clearly defined and includes all  relevant stakeholders (in this case including the existing digital customers). Then it becomes  much easier to define the right scope for the visualization.

