Project
Jeeves : mobile experience
The multiple iterations of Jeeves mobile
8
minute read
Design thinking
Product strategy
Design systems
Visual design
CLIENT
Jeeves
SERVICES
Mobile Design
ROLE
Lead Designer
Project summary
As Jeeves was growing and our product offerings were expanding, we needed to update our current mobile solution to align with our customer’s goals. We were in a position where we were being compared to some very robust solutions, and some very elegant and functional mobile apps. While our executive team firmly believes business happens on the desktop, I challenged that assumption by pushing for a mobile first solution. Here is a tale of ambition, intrigue, collaboration, and compromise. Let’s take a look at how it all began.
The initial Jeeves mobile experience was very utilitarian port of the desktop experience. At first glance any one would assume it was a hybrid application, but to my surprise and I’m sure yours too, this was a native application.
The day I started, the first thing I did was a heuristic analysis of the mobile and desktop applications. Apart from basic issues like a lack of typographical hierarchy, failing every A11Y test, and basic page level inconsistencies, it was barely usable. Before I landed at Jeeves they had no concept of personas, and thereby no concept who they were building for.
The second thing I did was create a set of personas for our core users based on a month long series of customer interviews. Once these personas were created it became clear that we needed 3 distinct applications, or at least a single app that adapted to these new roles.
Exploration
After establishing our personas it was time to get to work. I started by working with our existing features and the product team to establish measurable goals. At the time Jeeves a was a credit facility and lending platform. Our key utilization metric for our credit facility was transaction volume. Our lending model was a bit different, and our core metric was awareness.
With that in mind I started thinking in terms of awareness first while driving utilization of the credit facility. I worked with the VP of Product to introduce a new concept. I introduced a new phrase to the product team, NUX or new user experience (we'll explore that more here). I explored awareness strategies before the customer was even onboarded as part of the application process.
The premise was simple, once basic user information was gathered the customer had access to our product. Through set up of their account certain options were presented to them like how they would like to disburse funds. We would expose total exposure and then offer a simple set of percentage options with the ability to create your own.
After the NUX was introduced I fell back onto the personas created and what their expectations of the system were. I create three distinct views each designed specifically to support the intended goals set forth by the product team. The administrator could see the entire picture and make payments into the system. The manager would see macro and micro trends and be able to explore team utilization, the basic card holder would get to see activity and areas where they were out of policy. This became the north star vision.
Over time we revisited these dashboard screens multiple times in an effort to adapt to our evolving business model and product goals. Here a less than exhaustive look at some of the multiple iterations. One I personally loved was a pre application illustrated carousel featuring custom illustrations of landmarks from around the world.
