Japanese Mega Bank:
New smart payment solution for festival go-ers

USER RESEARCH / CONSULTING / FINANCE

As a consultant at KPMG Ignition Tokyo, I conducted ethnographic research and co-designed 2 workshops to generate new smart payment solution ideas for an innovation incubator of a Japanese mega bank. Since I can’t disclose the details of my project due to the NDA, this page covers a brief overview and key lessons learned :)

 

Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

DATE

  • Feb – April 2019

ROLE

  • User Researcher

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Conducted field research to understand user’s needs and pain points

  • Planned insight workshop to share research findings with stakeholders

  • Planned ideation workshop to generate and consolidate ideas

  • Designed journey maps, workshop materials, prototypes and final research report

TEAM

  • 2 Senior User Researchers

  • 1 User Researcher

TOOLS

  • Office 365

  • Keynote

Key takeaways

This was the first project I worked on after graduating from Central Saint Martin’s MA Innovation Management program, which meant that it was my first time applying academic knowledge into Japanese business setting. I truly appreciated the team’s patience to answer all my questions and their willingness to try my proposed ideas. I especially enjoyed working with the team lead who has taught me everything I need to know to be a “creative” in a corporate environment.

Even though our client was an innovation incubator of a Japanese mega bank, our methodologies - ethnographic research, workshops, co-creation etc. - were foreign to their eyes.

  • Anticipate user/team needs and prepare materials for various scenarios. When preparing a mockup/wireframe/prototype to show to your stakeholders, make sure to play out the conversation in your head in advance, so that you can prepare varieties of visual materials ahead of time. This might sound like a lot of work, but if you do this you can get a lot of decisions made in one meeting.

  • Speak the same language as your client and user. If developing a solution for domain experts, learn about their workflows, terminologies, competitors through desk research. Go through archive and read past documentations.

  • Articulate tradeoffs in decision-making. When proposing multiple ideas to stakeholders, make sure you communicate pros and cons of each idea, including: development cost, feasibility, complexity, usability. Also make sure you are in alignment with your team on which idea you want to recommend to your client before client meeting.

  • Keep the design process inclusive. Make sure to always show your work to the team throughout the design process. Not only would you want to check-in to ensure your design is viable and feasible, but also your team may have a great idea for the challenge you’re designing.