Service Design (Planet Centric)
Overview
Our team’s goal was to find out how to make sustainability an attractive, significant and visible part of the S-Pankki brand and how to get their customers to invest more responsibly.
Role
Service designer & project manager
Duration
2 weeks (Apr 2024)
Tools
Figma
We used the double diamond design process method in our project. First we needed to get a deeper understanding on the industry, then define our results, start developing the product, and finally deliver the product to the customer. We determined our research methods to be platform analyses (website and mobile), benchmarking and interview.
We knew it was necessary to study S-Pankki’s platforms (website and mobile app) to get a better picture of how the company currently communicates about responsible investing.
Benchmarking would help us to understand how S-Pankki’s competitors have met the challenge and how they communicate about responsible investing or encourage users to invest responsibly.
We sought information from investors to gauge their experience, interest and knowledge of responsible investing, and to better understand people’s investment behaviour in general.
For this project, we adopted the principles of planet centric design, prioritising the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants over solely focusing on the user. This approach emphasises transparency and proactively identifies potential risks and opportunities across various aspects of the PESTEL analysis. Subsequently, it enables the development of future scenarios based on these insights.
Despite S-Pankki's recognition as the most responsible bank brand in Finland for 12 consecutive years, their commitment to responsibility is not prominently displayed on crucial pages like the homepage.
While there is a wealth of information regarding responsibility, it is often challenging to locate and comprehend, particularly for novice investors.
The process of creating online banking credentials and the Savings questionnaire lack impact.
Saving and investing features on S-mobile should be more user-friendly.
Customers should be able to manage their finances seamlessly and access information to gain confidence in decision-making.
We conducted benchmarking of two of S-Pankki’s major competitors, focusing on Nordnet and Nordea's mobile applications. Our aim was to investigate how they have addressed the challenges related to promoting responsible investing in their mobile services.
Both applications allow filtering funds for responsible investing, which was also recognized and favored during interviews.
Both applications visualize fund information, but in Nordea's view, information is presented in visual, written, and numerical formats.
We interviewed seven investors and one founder of an asset management company to get a better understanding of people's knowledge, interest and experience of responsible investing.The interviews were conducted via Zoom, face-to-face and over the phone.
Most popular investments in low-risk funds
Most popular motive is to seek returns, but emerging markets are avoided
Only some mentioned criteria related to responsible investing e.g. ESG
Some knew little or nothing about responsible investing
Some said they would only start investing responsibly when their portfolio size was larger
The founder of an asset management company said that the main motivation for large investors to invest in responsible investments is their own interest and desire, and has seen this interest and desire grow, and thus sees more demand for responsible companies in the future
Tell the user about the opportunity of saving their bonuses and add a CTA button in the home screen.
This way we’re sharing awareness of the app’s services and ideally get the user to press the button. It’s evident to make the user journey after pressing the button as smooth as possible to minimise the bounce rate.
Divide the savings questionnaire into three different questionnaires which the user could modify and view later.
S-Pankki benefits by getting users to fill in the questionnaires when the threshold has been lowered by dividing the original one into three, but also by getting up-to-date information of the customers.
By adding a responsibility filter in the fund view on top of additional filter settings by an icon in top right.
Filter options:
Default
Sort by most responsible first
Sort by own investor profile (takes questionnaire answers into account)
By providing visualizations of the fund's overall responsibility and specific details regarding its ethical stance, users can more easily assess whether the fund aligns with their values or not.
By displaying the distribution of investments in the investments tab, users gain transparency regarding how much of their investments align with the values they have communicated through questionnaires.
By visualising the user how much of their investments match to their values and adding a button for them to change the distribution.
This will impact the user to be able to change the distribution to make their investments match their values more.
S-Pankki already notifies users every month about the bonuses the users are going to receive. We could add a CTA button for the user to start saving (investing) their bonuses and possibly even offer responsible options as default when proceeded.
This way we could engage the user into being an active customer of S-Pankki and by engaging them to the app, we could offer them other services of the company.
"The team of students from Metropolia did an excellent and high-quality job on the project. The concepts for S-mobile that resulted from the project were concrete and presented in a way that made it easy to share their ideas within the organization.
During the project, the team gathered information comprehensively and clearly understood the company's key business objectives. Based on these business objectives and customer insights, the team successfully developed good ideas and combined them into concrete concepts that support digitalization. The end result was of high quality from the perspectives of strategy, service design, and UI/UX design. Collaboration with the students went smoothly, and they had a professional approach to their work."
