New Technology is Providing Banks with the Opportunity to Modernize Their Methods. Is The Financial Services Industry Up to the Challenge?

eDesign the Magazine of Interactive Design
by Ariana Donalds

Neil Crofts, an England-based consultant and former European strategy director for Razorfish, believes current banking experiences, even those powered by new technology, are sadly conventional. These days, banks provide personalized views of account information via the Internet, wireless devices, and iTV, but those views are not always easy to follow and often don't fit on smaller screens. More importantly, Crofts says, "Our experience of banking is based on accounting practices devised hundreds of years ago with lists of numbers and items that need to be reconciled and balancedÑwhere is the fun in that?" Crofts believes new technology provides an opportunity for banks to customize experiences for individual users. "Banks, at least in the U.K., are in the habit of configuring themselves around their own internal needs and structures rather than around the customer's needs," he says.

Crofts is encouraging banks to do a little blue-sky thinking about user-centered design opportunities by developing a concept ATM interface more akin to a video game than a balance sheet. For now, Crofts's flight simulator consists of a QuickTime movie, which shows what it might look like to monitor your finances from the cockpit of a plane.

Here's how the interface works: The rise and fall of the aircraft, or change in altitude, represents deposits and withdrawals. The upper right-hand corner of the screen shows the altitude of the plane, or the numerical value of your account balance, as it increases or decreases. Descriptions of the various charges or deposits to your account (insurance, salary, ATM charge, tax bill, etc.) are displayed in the lower right-hand corner. The inset in the lower left-hand corner shows a view from above the aircraft and the terrain beneath it. The cubes floating in the sky can be color-coded to a user's preferences and can serve as reminders of regular expenses, for example, weekly groceries, or your monthly phone bill. Red might represent a debit, for example; green, a credit; and white, unrealized or potential expenditures.

It is doubtful as to whether banks will heed the call for such highly personalized and intricate interfaces, but perhaps other companies will provide that layer of interaction, Crofts says. "My suspicion is that it will be others who offer the experiences and that the banks will simply become back-end providers. It is already happening. In England, I feel greater affinity with the Virgin brand than I do with any of the major banks. Virgin provides me with my user interface both on the phone and online while the Royal Bank of Scotland actually moves money about."

For an in-depth look at the new technologies and channels for banking in the 21st century, check out the May/June issue of eDesign magazine.

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