The Future of Banking
Our team's work with FreedomPay aided the design of a loyalty program payment system that seamlessly integrates the businesses around us into our daily lives.
FreedomPay, a major financial-technology company based in Philadelphia, is building the world's largest independent commerce platform. The commerce platform offers multiple financial services such as payment processing, loyalty programs, and data management. Our team's job was to conduct research on loyalty programs and privacy preferences in order to incorporate our findings into the consumer wallet portion of the commerce platform.1
1: A Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) was required to work on this project. As a result, the application's name has been removed from this case study. However, I am able to disclose our team's contribution to the project.
As a third-semester student on their second studio project, I was ready to learn as much as I could from my more-experienced teammates and sponsors. My notable contributions to the project are as follows:
Hoping to provide feedback to our sponsors, our team needed a deep understanding of all the elements at play. Loyalty programs, data-privacy, the tendencies of Generation Z, Web3, & blockchain technologies, are all divisions of the Freedom Pay vision we were designing and researching for. Developing a knowledge base of information that is relevant to our project scope helped to elevate our abilities going forward.
In this paper, it is explained that Gen-Z participants rarely mind "selling" their low privacy information such as name, age, date-of-birth, and phone number. Monetary rewards that equal or exceed $15 entice participants to share their shopping and social media information.
Ethereum operates very similarly to BitCoin by using the blockchain to decentralize the currency. However, SoulBound extends this idea from Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin by using NFTs as verifications for identities and achievements. This would allow individuals to verify all of their information using blockchain technologies.
Solid is a set of conventions and tools that lets people store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are secure personal web servers for data. When data is stored in someone's Pod, they control which people and applications can access it. To get a pod, you need to select a Pod Provider.
MyData Global aims to empower individuals by improving their right to self-determination regarding their personal data. They do this by essentially 'stamping' their approval onto companies it partners with. The human-centric paradigm strives for a fair, sustainable, and prosperous digital society, where the sharing of personal data is based on trust and a balanced and fair relationship between individuals and organizations.
EngagePeople delivers greater emotional connection between loyalty members, program sponsors, and retailers. From managing your space to digitizing modern offices with visitor management system and employee engagement, Engage brings in a suite of advanced workspace management software with white labeled mobile apps to streamline modern workspaces.
Nectar allows users to collect points while shopping with a partner brand in the NECTAR. Spend points to buy things you love from the chosen brand. Members can choose from 300+ big brand partners to collect points, and personalized offers from different brands make users feel special.
Avios is British Airway's loyalty reward points based on miles flown. They can be earned and redeemed on any Oneworld flights, and are based on the actual miles flown. Spending Avios loyalty points can provide users with reward flights and upgraded seats.
This UX audit conducts a quality assurance test on the FreedomPay application. More specifically, this UX audit is to assess the usability and effectiveness of the app. Our sponsor provided us with video journey of the application prototype. We found a certain video regarding the app's registration and onboarding process to be confusing and underwhelming. Upon opening the application, the user is presented with three (3) onboarding screens before gaining full access to the application.
As a result of the heuristic evaluation of the previous FreedomPay onboarding screens, our team has collected a number of findings that would greatly improve the user experience of the onboarding process.
This screen is a cleaner introduction to the application, similar to the startup screen for Instagram.
The 3 onboarding overview screens will give new users an introduction to how the application works and how it can be used.
The creation of a nickname is essential to the application due to its decentralized operation. Users will create a nickname (similar to a username on other apps) and will use that name to communicate with businesses and other users.
The mnemonic phrase is also very important to the operations of the app. Instead of a set password, users are asked to take a randomly generated string of words as their password. Due to the nature of web3, this version of account security is more secure than the traditional password model.
Next, because the application centers around banking and the transfer of money, an additional layer of security in the form of biometric scanner is also implemented. This authentication method can take the form of Face ID, Touch ID, or a simple 4 digit pin.
Finally, after finishing the onboarding process, users are greeted with cards describing core features of the application, how it use it, and where they can find these features. The cards will go away after the user has interacted with a feature, and will open up the rest of the app after the user has completed their tutorial.
In order to better understand loyalty systems as a whole and identify key features that lead to their success, we mapped out its core features and how they work. This would then work as a backbone to analyze the veracity app and give us a point of reference when we would conduct our UX audit of the veracity screens.
These could consist of various points and reward schemes ranging from simple points per purchase to cashback and or some sort of percentage of value back. However most seemed to have sorts of exclusive deals or offers for their members. The team also found that most systems tend to be free or have a hybrid side for their power users where their average user would most likely use their free services but their especially loyal or more frequent users would pay for more features.
Next the team moved to identify some of the common features and or practices present across the various platforms we identified. We chose to call this section possibly problematic features as most are not inherently malignant but the degree they are used and pushed could lead to creeping into dark or manipulative patterns.
Lastly, the team moved to identify the primary ways these services succeed, and what drives that success. We identified three categories being:
Through the project we learned that user data is actually quite impactful to these service providers even though some of the data they obtain may seem mundane like name, email or age. However, this is fairly key in driving further user interaction as these various data points are key in identifying user preferences and how to market a merchant's products.
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The entire onboarding process was redesigned from the ground up, allowing users to experience a fluid introduction to the app. It includes a more refined walkthrough and user zero state.
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Our team also reimagined the credentials page, which are pieces of information that allow users to gain FRP in a passive state based on the purchases in certain categories.
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Shoutbacks are actions you can make based on active credentials, which show to nearby businesses. If a shoutback is intitiated, businesses can use this information to send invitations.
This was by far the most complex, complicated, and thought-provoking project I've had the chance to work on. Coming into this project, I had very little to no knowledge of how Web3, crypto, and blockchain technologies could be applied to an app like the one FreedomPay asked our team to review. Below are a few notable points about this project and thoughts for improvements.
Once again, thank you to everyone involved at FreedomPay that helped our team create our final deliverables and guide this project. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime project experience that I won't forget!
