Creating measurable value starts with asking the right questions

Design within financial services is often synonymous with the design of digital products such as personal banking applications or investment platforms. However, it also includes the holistic design of systems and experiences, which is where service designers add value.

Delivering value is the result of a well-orchestrated system of people, process, and technology – which reflects good design. Good design, whether it’s a product, system or experience, is based in research.

Solving for the right problem is often harder than designing the solution

Sometimes a figurative wrench gets thrown into a business’ already sound system or slowly, over time, the system starts to break down at various points. For global, enterprise-wide challenges, teams often see symptoms of these breakdowns in isolation. Their instinct is to patch things up quickly and return to business as usual or operate off assumption and deliver a solution that only ends up solving for a symptom of the core challenge.

Without strategic research and design, these tactical fixes or failed attempts at strategic solutions can make the situation worse. For example, they may reduce efficiency, increase operational risk, have a low return on investment (or none), increase technology debt and rarely solve the underlying challenge.

The Design Team within Macquarie’s Corporate Operations Group specialises in conducting strategic research and design, supporting our technology and business teams in the creation of internal and externally facing solutions. So, following human-centered design principles, when we’re brought in to support a project, we always start with learning as much as we can about the problem space before trying to solve for anything. This phase is frequently referred to as ‘Discovery’.
 

It’s less about understanding what people need, and more about understanding why

During the Discovery phase, designers need to become experts in the problem space. In addition to leveraging available quantitative data, industry research and internal business material, it’s imperative that we speak to the people impacted by the problem space. These conversations are called ‘empathy interviews’.

While these may sound formal, instead of probing the interviewee with a series of set questions or asking them to share everything on their mind, the aim is to ask targeted, but open-ended questions. The interviewer should also create a psychologically safe environment that encourages the interviewee to open up.

An ideal open-ended question should be neutral and prompt a response other than ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This reduces the risk of the interviewer bringing personal bias and helps uncover more reasoning behind someone’s thoughts or behaviour.

The interview shouldn’t result in a laundry list of items to action. It’s imperative to understand what the user is trying to achieve at the end of the day, and then what either hinders or aids that success.

Outcomes over outputs. Start by questioning the problem space itself, “why do we do X, do we still need to do X?”. There’s a chance that this may be a legacy process or activity that is no longer adding value. Then once its value is clarified, the designer can dive deeper into understanding how X is currently done, and unpack the associated processes, technology and people involved.
 

It’s important to note that while getting a diverse interviewee demographic is essential, we want to understand the wide spectrum of attitudes and behaviours within the problem space. To do this, consider your extreme users, or edge cases. Talk to someone who has only created this report once, and then to someone who has done it every day for the past two years. Then perhaps, talk to someone who consistently delivers the report on time, and then to someone whose delivery is highly variable.

A well-designed experience can be a powerful differentiator for your employees and customers

A well-designed solution doesn’t just address the user’s explicit needs, it also addresses their latent needs. Latent needs are needs that aren’t immediately obvious, even to the person themself. They can stem from emotional, social, or related needs as humans.

When a designer asks their users the right kind of questions (open-ended, problem focused), they gain greater insight into these latent needs and behaviours. These can then be factored into user requirements for solution development.

The resulting solution will be designed to meet the users’ spectrum of needs and fit alongside their existing behaviours. This consequently reduces the risk of solution adoption and increases the likelihood of longer-term engagement and success.

Be curious

Regardless of your industry, or your role, asking the right question will help uncover previously hidden insights and drive business value. When in doubt, ask why, and challenge yourself to question the process or system itself before looking to improve it.