The client is challenger brand looking to make waves in the financial world. They want an intuitive app that will help them stand out from the crowd. The goals is to create three responsive screens for tablet, molbile and desktop for my accounts, current account and my spending. The client had some established brand principles in place. Their tone and personality are as follows: Playful - Using our product should be a joy for users. We're not afraid to show some personality through color, animation and shape, but never at the cost of being intuitive. Clear - we're dealing with people's money, so we need to present information in a logical and uncluttered way. Trustworthy - users must feel they can trust our product.
My role
UI Design, branding, creation of three responsive screens for tablet, mobile and desktop
Timeline
Mood-board and competitive benchmarking
Typography scale
Color palette
Buttons and interactive states
Icons and imagery
Header, footer, & status bar
Grid system
Brand
Wireframes
A key consideration in any project is the tone, personality and values of the brand. As a mood board of design references is a valuable source of inspiration to these considerations, the first step were to create a mood board with the following objectives;
Research direct and indirect competitors and gather inspiration from the market
Create a mood board from the gathered references
Identify products that communicates the qualities: Playful, Clear & Trustworthy
Gather examples of UI elements with different interactive states and place them into your mood board
Look for form fields, buttons, tables, menus, and graphs – anything relevant to the design of a banking application
Consider the visual treatments to communicate different states for some of these elements
Research UI designs and fonts that match the brand values of Playful, Clear and Trustworthy
Gather references of color and shape used effectively by other brands and add them to your mood board
The first step in the process of creating AVA Bank was identify direct and indirect competitors, as well as gathering inspiration from the market.
The following direct and indirect competitors were identified: Monzo, Sparebank 1, Sparebank Møre, Vipps, Finn.no, N-go, Google Analytics, Snapchat, Nordnet, DNB, Acne Studios, Chanel, Coca-Cola, and Santander.
Other inspiration from the market was gathered from Dribble focusing on Flat Design illustrations.
The first step in the process of creating AVA Bank was identify direct and indirect competitors, as well as gathering inspiration from the market.
The following direct and indirect competitors were identified: Monzo, Sparebank 1, Sparebank Møre, Vipps, Finn.no, N-go, Google Analytics, Snapchat, Nordnet, DNB, Acne Studios, Chanel, Coca-Cola, and Santander.
Other inspiration from the market was gathered from Dribble focusing on Flat Design illustrations.
Grid for desktop, tablet and mobile screens:
• 8pt grid for each screen size
• 12 column grid for desktop
• 8 column grid for tablet
• 4 column grid for mobile
CREATION OF THE BRAND
After the process of gathering insights and inspiration from different sources; direct and indirect competitors, Dribble, and Pinterest, creating mood boards with the references, the next step were to create a brand which had the three values playful, clear and trustworthy.
COLOR
As all colors have different meanings behind them, I found myself selecting blue, as the color blue symbolizes trust, safety, loyalty and responsibility.
NAME
For the bank I desired a short name with meaning behind it. Just like many others, I do favor some names, amongst them are Ava. It's not a traditional name in Norway, but its short, snappy and it visually draws my attention. The name Ava is a girl's name and is known to mean 'birdlike', 'lively', 'life', 'water', island'. The meaning behind the name complimented the primary color of choice blue. As water is blue and the bird flies and lives his life in the blue sky, I assured that the name and the color complimented each other.
PERSONA
In order to let users relate to the bank on a more personal level than normal, I decided to put a face to the name. Ava is a young intelligent, browned hair girl who keeps track of her finances.
Three responsive screens for tablet, mobile and desktop were designed for My accounts, Current account and My Spending.
Approaching the case study from a visual design angle has been fun, creative, but also challenging. Through this journey, I've learned gaps that I need to fill, especially when it comes to grid system and it's responsiveness. When it comes to brand creation I truly admire people in the field who has this as an expertise, as I found it quite challenging as I have my own taste and flavor, that I need to put aside, overall a great experience.