Amplifying the mobile payments experience
Player-coach leadership on User Experience achieves 4.5 Stars in App store by reducing core task completion steps.
The problem
JP Morgan & Chase, the biggest bank in the United States, had developed ChasePay®, a new way for customers to pay in their daily life and earn rewards. After 1.5 years from launch, an experience overhaul and redesign were necessary to compete with well-established solutions like Apple Pay.
Role: Player-Coach Leader—UX/Interaction Design
Team: Evangelos, David, Tim, Lina, Mickey, Liz, Willy, Brian, Alejandra, Alice, Eve
Year: 2016-2018
Skills: Product Design, UX, Information architecture, Leadership, Interaction design, UX strategy, Stakeholder management
Results & Impact
Player-coach leadership of the user experience strategy and architecture. Completed mobile redesign from architecture to interactions, simplified to 3 high-level actions.
4.5
2+
Stars rating in App stor
Steps for task completion
< 2
Applications adopting UX architecture
Key moments - trade offs
Balancing Partners Needs and Experience
The current app experience was driven by promoting multiple features based on external partnerships like order ahead and offers, but feedback showed the app lacked focus and had confusing architecture that hurt the user experience. I analyzed every content type, feature, and interaction and simplified the architecture to 3 core actions—Paying, Finding, and Managing—allowing for visual clarity and feature scalability while creating a personal feeling for each user.
Whiteboard version of the AS IS and the Fututre architecture
Experience First When Promoting Core Business Objective
In the current version, the core function of paying was not the central element in the experience, but customers' primary intent was to pay quickly and easily. The redesign focused on promoting paying as the focal and anchor point, following customer intent. I designed multiple versions supporting the simplified architecture and put them through usability testing before arriving at the final version.
Previous architecture with focus on business priorities creating confusion to the user limiting engagement with the full product
New architecture organizing everything in the top 3 customer priorities, Pay, Find, Manage
Reimagining the App Character Within Strict Bank Visual Identity
The redesign scope included new visual identity and branding modernization, but operating within the bank's broader visual identity created specific constraints on how far we could go. Together with the visual designers, we designed scenario workshops to explore different dimensions and engaged with stakeholders and customers, ensuring continuous alignment for our direction and final output.
Brand language connected to the UX architecture
Differentiating in a Competitive Market
ChasePay was competing with Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, and the redesign needed to amplify the expanded offering that Chase could provide by leveraging cards, offers, order ahead, and more banking features. The new architecture created space for standardized content promotion and feature expansion, and the improved brand language was amplified by focusing on the message of a holistic payment experience.
Positioning Chase Pay as holistic payments experience with unique features and benefits
Learnings
Products Based on Partnerships Have Strong Pull from Business: Communicate clearly why the choices made are superior, when the product re-imagination is heavily influenced by the pull from priorities coming from business partnerships.
Aligning Experience and Visual Visions: Working simultaneously on the experience and visual redesign creates superior synergies leveraging each process and engages disciplines deeper.