Context

Sony Bank, a Japanese online bank, identified the need to simplify banking for expatriates, a rapidly growing demographic. A lack of multilingual financial services, paired with the steep learning curve of the banking system made it challenging for newly-arrived foreigners to navigate banking in Japan.

While working at Designit I had the opportunity to join the team that partnered with Sony Bank.

Challenge

The objective was to help Sony Bank in launching an intuitive and seamless English online banking experience for foreign residents in Japan.

Our team had to understand the banking landscape for foreigners in Japan, identify the key pain points of this demographic and adapt selected services of Sony Bank’s Japanese offering to make them accessible through a new digital solution that addresses the needs of expatriates.

Approach

Desk Research and Interviews

We kicked off the project by conducting desk research and user interviews to understand Japan's banking ecosystem, benchmark international online banking standards, and empathize with the unique needs of expatriates. The unveiled insights enabled us to create detailed user personas, providing a human-centric lens to guide our design decisions.

Stakeholder research

In parallel, we mapped out the existing banking products offered by Sony Bank and delved into stakeholder research to get a clear picture of Sony Bank's service, objectives, strategic vision, and target audience. This combined in-depth understanding helped align our design solutions with the company's goals.

Prioritization Workshops

We hosted workshops to share research insights and feature recommendations, fostering a common understanding among the stakeholders. Collaborating with Sony Bank's team, we defined the service's outline, prioritized the products to be included based on user needs, technical feasibility, and overarching business goals.

Designing Promotional Website

The main part of the project was the design of the promotional website, introducing the new offering. This included establishing the brand identity for Sony Bank's English digital presence, consisting of visual language, illustration style and tone of voice. We iteratively created wireframes, copy, high-fidelity screens, and click prototypes for the responsive website.

Designing Account Opening App

Our journey extended to designing an account opening mobile app that reduces complicated paperwork and allows users to digitally open a bank account. The creation of this new touchpoint involved a deep dive into understanding the current paper-based account opening process, adjusting to technical constraints, crafting user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity screens, prototypes, and implementable design assets.

User Guides and Help Center

Recognizing the importance of post-launch support, we dedicated efforts to design a comprehensive help center, including user guides and FAQs. Beyond layouts and visual style, our involvement extended to copywriting, ensuring clarity and simplicity in explaining the products, their uses, and associated benefits.

Outcome

Through this project we supported Sony Bank in introducing their English offering online and simplifying the banking experience for expatriates in Japan.

The informational website we designed helps foreign customers to understand the products and services offered by Sony Bank, making banking in Japan more accessible.

The English Help Desk not only enables Customer Self-Service by empowering users with the knowledge needed to troubleshoot, but also establishes a clear communication channel for ongoing support.

While opening a bank account in Japan is usually a complicated and paper-based process, the new Open Account app significantly reduces time and effort required. Now foreign customers can share their information and scan documents on mobile.

My role

I was fortunate to be a part of this project from start to end, contributing to all design phases as a Digital Designer on the Designit Team.

My main responsibilities included conducting secondary research, auditing Sony Bank's products, creating information architecture, wireframes, content draft and interactive prototypes of the website. For the account opening app I mapped out user flows, designed UI components, prototypes and final screens. Furthermore I worked on the UX, UI and content of the Help Center and it’s included User Guides.

During the production phase I had the chance to lead the design execution, supervising the team of designers to ensure adherence to timelines, accuracy of content, and consistency with the defined brand identity. In addition, I provided feedback to the developer team to ensure a seamless implementation.