What lessons Citibank actually should learn?
The user experience community now secretly (ok, not so secretly) is giggling on the news about Citibank losing $500 million just because of a “stupid design.” We all have no questions about why it happened. However, people who do not work in the field might get some false ideas from the article posted on 2/17/2021. Huge respect to TIMOTHY B. LEE, who raised awareness but I need to add more details on the Citibank design issue.
Why do I care? Because I still (sometimes) have to work with people who think that design is about making things look pretty. And it might cost them a lot of money!
A quick recap on what happened.
Someone who was responsible for payment has made a mistake in a form that looks like this.
People who were responsible for checking the correctness of transactions approved it. As a result, Citibank sent out almost $900 million instead of the $7.8 million it intended to send. Some lenders returned money voluntarily, but some didn’t, and in this case, they have the right not to do so.
Of course, one would argue that it is not solely a design problem, but also human resources, lack of training, inadequate oversight, and so on. But let’s assume that after this accident, Citibank figures out that it is more safe and cheap to re-design the system (or change the software provider) than make three people check each transaction and still fail.
What mistakes can a company make when deciding to renew a design?
1. Assuming that a nice modern UI (User Interface) will solve usability problems.
That is what got my attention in the original article. The assumption that the bad UI causes the mistake. When it is true that clean and simple design helps with interface perception, it can be as misleading as the old cumbersome version! You need people who have a deep understanding of how the human brain works, not just somebody who can “make it pretty.”
When stocks are high, don’t only hire UI/visual designers. UI is a cherry on top. Look for UX (User Experience) designers. If you are a big company, make sure that UX and UI designers are different people. (If you don’t know the difference between UX and UI designers, check this article). If you are a small startup and tight on budget, you probably can get away with a UI/UX designer, assuming that you’re not risking millions of dollars.
2. Not bothering to hire UX (User Experience) Researchers
Why should you? You already hired experienced UX designers who know their stuff, right? It is their job to create a perfect, intuitive, and error proof interface! Of course, good UX designers know a lot about best practices and design patterns; however, the more unique and complex system you’re trying to build, the more you need a person who knows how to get and appropriately analyze feedback from your users. If we’re talking about millions of dollars (in revenue or as a cost of mistake), you definitely need a researcher.
3. Not trusting your UX (User Experience) team
You hired a UX team because you know that all cool kids have it, but you still know better how your product should be. You decide on ideas and directions, maybe involving business people, sales people, and marketers, and then let the UX team “make it intuitive and modern.” Or You ignore the research results if it doesn’t fit your concept. Or let developers decide on the design because you “don’t have time for testing prototypes.” It doesn’t make sense to hire unique specialists and then waste their advice. If you have UXers — invite them to crucial conversations at the very beginning and listen to them. They will save you a lot of time and money.
If you’re not Citibank but still using or selling something that looks like Flexcube, my advice is not to wait until it is too late.
Don’t invest 500 thousand dollars to get modern-looking stuff, UI is just the tip of the iceberg! Find user experience professionals who can build a new system from the ground up.
P.s. If you want to look at numbers read the True ROI of UX case study
