How might we…

… create a Zelle home page that considers user research and follows industry standards while complying with Early Warning Services (EWS) regulations?

Research and Constraints

When building a new Zelle home page, I started by understanding the requirements of Zelle’s owner, Early Warning Services (EWS). Those considerations are as follows:

• Send, Request, and Split buttons must be accessible from the main page.

• Send, Request, and Split buttons must be the focal point of the design.

• Send, Request, and Split buttons must be represented equally.

• Settings must be accessible from the main page.

• The page must be titled: “Send Money With Zelle.”

After exploring the constraints and requirements set by EWS, I decided to research how other banks designed their Zelle home page. I found that of PNC’s competitors showed a preview of the user’s activity. While collecting information on how other banks design their page, I also asked the users about their experiences with competitors’ interfaces. The majority of those I polled said they most enjoyed having a preview of their activity because it gave them easy access to check the status of their previous transactions. Knowing that users like to look back at old transactions prompted me to ask what else they use the Zelle page for. I found that people liked to see previous transactions and contacts to inform future transactions. For example, if they hadn’t Zelled someone in a while, they liked to select contacts from their previous activity to make sure they were sending money to the right person.

With the above constraints and research findings, I made the following design decisions and created the icons and layouts below.

1. Users don’t always use Zelle to send or request money, so it should not take up most of the screen.

2. Users want to see their previous activity to inform future activity.

3. Users want to see a list of recipients they saved or previously interacted with.

4. Users want to be able to search for specific transactions or recipients.

Final Design

My design's final version is currently live in the PNC mobile app. It includes my design decisions, including smaller buttons and a preview of a user’s previous activity.

Interaction Design

When I started my internship I was interested in learning about animations and interaction design. To learn this, I was tasked with designing a new loading animation to show users that Zelle was in the process of sending their payment.

My first design showed circles moving around the user’s profile image. After presenting my design during a weekly critique with my team, I discovered that rotating animations often give users nervous because they believe the action they took is not working. Since banking and finances can be sensitive for many people, I wanted to avoid causing extra anxiety for users.

After receiving this feedback from my teammates, I continued to brainstorm other animations to use. I ended on the following animation, which has a series of circles around the user’s profile picture that change opacity. The changing opacity creates an outward motion meant to replicate sending money to someone else. My design was implemented, and the following video is screen-recorded from the PNC mobile app.

Additional Projects

At PNC, I also worked on two group projects that are confidential. The first project involved implementing a loan and mortgage dashboard and payment flow into the mobile application. I worked with one other design intern and a product management intern. We selected this project based on internal research reports that said users were disappointed that they could not pay their loans on the mobile app.

The second group project I worked on was my capstone. We wanted to create a product for students that promotes financial literacy and helps them learn how to build credit. I worked on this project with one product management intern and two design interns. We created an onboarding process that tests users’ financial literacy and curates finance facts based on the knowledge established in the quiz.

For more information on these two projects, please reach out.