User Experience and Its Importance in Banking Software: A Study of User Experience During Development

Sammanfattning: This study was conducted to provide an explanation as to why user experience is important when designing software, specifically for a banking company undergoing a complete redesign of their banking client. Neglecting the user experience design in the development of any application or webpage can lead to user frustration and abandonment. Frustration can lead to terrible customer service and reliability, such as an employee too focused on an issue with the banking client rather than the issue the customer is hoping to resolve. Companies have realized the importance of user experience when designing their software and the industry has incurred a large demand for front-end developers and user experience designers. From gaming to finance to marketing and retail, the benefits in designing an exceptional user experience is worth the time and effort. Besides user experience being the core concept discussed in this thesis, gathering information about user interfaces was necessary in order to understand the design of a good user experience. Information gathering was done on front-end frameworks and their importance on the way people access media and applications. Development of front-end frameworks, their use, and their impact on the technological landscape can be explained further, but the focus of the thesis is on the benefits of user experience in banking software. The result was also used to give an extensive recommendation to Resurs Bank, comparing it to their current client, with the goal of creating better usability and less frustration. The data gathered through the survey and interviews shows that Resurs Bank can improve the UX of their software. Designing a new web client with the feedback gathered would help boost productivity by solving issues that would hinder an employee’s ability to help a customer. Besides an increase in functionality and usability, maintenance can be substantially easier depending on the front-end framework chosen. Many of the new modern frameworks have enough documentation and updates to make maintenance much easier compared to older frameworks. Using Bootstrap as the front-end framework would make it easier to create a modern, cohesive UI and make it easier to design the UX. Once the UI is visually updated, the developers can design a UX tailored to the data gathered through the survey and interviews, such as keeping popular shortcuts and removing clutter. Resurs Bank can also use the analysis done on their current client and consider it when designing the layout of their new web client.