Monievend

Challenge

Monievend is a Nigerian based financial technology company that provides services such as utility bill payments, bank funds transfer, and airtime recharge to its users with or without an internet connection. Its target audience is mainly small to medium scale businesses, and solopreneurs.

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Maze

Role(s)

Buhari Abdulhakeem (CEO)
Pitwa Isaac (CTO)
Salaudeen RIdhwan (UI/UX Designer)
Buhari Amina (Front-end developer)

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity website design
System Architecture
Design documentation

Monievend

Challenge

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Maze

Role(s)

Buhari Abdulhakeem (CEO)
Pitwa Isaac (CTO)
Salaudeen RIdhwan (UI/UX Designer)
Buhari Amina (Front-end developer)

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity website design
System Architecture
Design documentation

Monievend

Challenge

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Maze

Role(s)

Buhari Abdulhakeem (CEO)
Pitwa Isaac (CTO)
Salaudeen RIdhwan (UI/UX Designer)
Buhari Amina (Front-end developer)

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity website design
System Architecture
Design documentation

Visit monievend

Project goals

Gain insights trough research of our target audience Collect data from research and create a website to drive customer retention and engagement. Design an easy-to-use interface and flow for the company website and software.

The Design Process

My role

My role is the UI/UX designer was to work with the development team and also take insights from business decisions like financial constraints as well as changes in feature preferences and research based decisions to create a website that communicates the business goals and how we as a company can help solve our users problems in a concise manner. I also worked on the site architecture and the in-house financial curation software. - Build personalized experiences for the users. - Created a website that communicates the business goals to the target audience in a simple and easy to comprehend manner. - Design a system structure with the lowest possible click rate required to get to and use the system. - Designed a login and registration flow for users to sign up with their phone numbers or email address as research showed our target audience may not have email addresses.

Challenge

The financial technology space in Nigeria has rapidly grown over the past few years as a lot of companies have pushed the boundaries of what can be a banking experience. However, one common problem theme is most people's banking experiences are unstable internet access and lack of Internet Service Provider (ISP) coverage. Many metropolitan cities in Nigeria have access to a stable enough internet. However, for most parts of Nigeria, this is not the case. Many regions and people do not have access to a good enough network or any internet access at all. Monievend opted to create a solution to this problem by making USSD payments more versatile for other forms of payment and accessible to its users.

Map of Nigeria showinig network coverage of MTN ISP (it has the largest coverage area in Nigeria)

Research

Understanding the current user behavior with primary research

Having certain assumptions in mind, we carried out primary market research to validate or dispense certain assumptions as well as to understand our target demographic and how they interact with our already functional POS machine and how they came across our product. For this, I conducted a quantitative analysis using Google Forms and pen and paper questionnaires for surveys. I was also able to get a few one-on-one interviews for qualitative analysis although the participants were a bit skeptical since they were unfamiliar with the process. Gaining quantitative insights from the surveys were helpful as they gave a broader sense of understanding of the market while the qualitative insights from the one-on-one interviews gave a deeper understanding of user needs and challenges. After the primary research was concluded, we were able to come up with 3 user types: Business owners (Merchants) - These are business owners like small to medium sized business owners, and POS workers Customers - These are the people that patronize business owners. Portal users - These are people who access services on their own via the website.

Here are the challenges we faced during research

1. Convincing participants to participate in the interview required a lot of convincing, patience, and negotiating as they felt skeptical about having their voices recorded due to superstitious beliefs 2. Our target audience mostly consists of POS vendors who are a bit skeptical about technology so conducting research had to be done in-person on the busy streets. 3. Gaining insights, understanding, and knowing what type of copy to address users was also a challenge because the target demographic required me to simplify the words and icons I used to increase their chances of understanding.

Solution to the challenges

1. Providing and presenting incentives was a good way to motivate them to participate in the interviews. 2. Seeing their peers participate and word of mouth about the interviews also increased the quantity of willing participants and the quality of the insights gained. 3. As much of a challenge as it was to simplify the text used on the website, listening to the interviewees gave us a more detailed understanding of their English proficiency level which helped improve copy accuracy.

Schema of the site architecture

Insights from the interview sessions

1. Users do not like to read too much jargon except it's important information. 2. Word of mouth is a great proof of reliability that helps spread awareness very quickly in packed spaces like markets. Local reviews matter for easy adaptation and market penetration. 3. Most users in the target audience did not have an email address to work with.

Ideation and prototyping

Following our research on the user behavior while interacting with payment processes, I designed a mock up prototype that allowed for the two account types to be used simultaneously by users. The next stage was user testing

Initial prototype design for Monievend website Dashboard

Usability tests

We also conducted usability tests by giving the participants simple tasks such as accessing the payment software from the website in order to understand their pain points. Using the results from the tests, we were able to create personas that matched our audiences profiles.

An image of the business woman Sarah's persona

Insights

- Visual queues accompanied by texts worked wonders in educating and directing the users. - Copy matters - What language you use to convey messages to users must be concise and clear to them so research on your users behavior and demographic was key in deigning the navigation bar - Not all pages in the mobile app needed a navigation bar - Initially, I made sure to add a navigation menu to the bottom of each of the top level pages (home, settings, convert and withdraw pages). However, not only did they obstruct the functionality of the interface of some of the pages, but they also did not serve a purpose making them redundant.

Low-fidelity prototype for the website showing the customers profile

Style guide

A design system is a combination of layout pattern, component libraries, documentation, style guides and more which serves as a single source of truth for products design process. Creating a style guide was not so challenging as it did not require research on what the company wanted as say, its primary colors. It however involved working with the branding and graphics design team to build a scalable style guide. Using assets provided by the design team, I was able to create a suitable style guide for the website design. Note: I was not in charge of designing the proprietary software. Only research.

Snapsot of the some input components

High fidelity design

Good high fidelity designs are a result of good low fidelity prototypes and tests. I translated the low fidelity deigns, research on user behavior, and assets from the design team to create a high fidelity website with copy that matched what would be most pleasing to the users.

Components

FAQ's

What if the customer loses their mobile phone number?

In most countries, your number phone number is linked with your national ID. This is also the same for Nigeria. So simply retrieving your phone number will grant you access to your account.

Impact and learnings

Collaboration - Having worked with small generalist teams in the past, it was very freeing to work with specialists who did excellent work. It also pushed me to do my best and beyond to give the best outcome. Perspective - Before working on this project, I did not think much of how advanced my understanding of technology was relative to other people. I gained further insights on how simple things we take for granted like copy writing can be the barrier between a potential sign up or not.

Visit monievend

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk