The benefits of constraints

On the train to work today, I realised I couldn’t log in to my online banking, hence I couldn’t check that a direct debit had stopped. This was frustrating, and after navigating through the worlds worst phone-tree system just to hear a “Yes”, I decided to start sketching how things could be better. When I got to work, I dumped my notes into Omnigraffle using Patrick Crowley’s iPhone stencil and that’s where I stopped.

Obviously wire-framing a mobile banking application takes a little more than a train journey to do successfully, but none the less I believe what I sketched out is a better interface to banking than I currently have, mobile or otherwise.

The beauty of constraints

Mobile sites tend to be lightweight equivalents of their desktop counterparts. They usually ignore the context of mobility, but that’s a separate issue. What I find interesting is that the “lightweight equivalent” usually turns out to be a better site, full stop. With banking, the “benefits” of a fully featured desktop site are car insurance, house insurance, loan applications, mortgage applications, savings schemes. Undoubtedly most of these have a place somewhere, but they really junk up the interface most of time.

A good way to focus your site, is to design it for the mobile, impatient, and angry user who just wants to X,Y,Z. In the case of banking this could be check balance, view account activity, pay credit card bill. Why not just launch this anorexic application, and then see what’s missing? In my experience users are far quicker to tell you what features they want added to an application, than to list the features they can live without. The best way to lose weight, is to not put it on in the first place.

App School

If you have an idea for a cool (possibly mobile) web app, we’ll build it for you. We’ll even cover 95% of the cost. Just be sure to get your applications in by Thursday.