Case Study No. 2, Clarity
Case Study No. 2
Clarity, brevity, euphony.
ONLINE Account Opening, HUNTINGTON NATIONAL BANK
Goal: Generate an online experience that mirrors in-person customer service interactions. Make digital more human.
Design Challenge: Establishing an engaging voice within a lengthy online form; clarifying the reasons for the lengthiness in order to avoid customer frustration and drop-off; understanding the banker experience to ensure consistency and high customer satisfaction, regardless the engagement channel
My Role: Content strategist and designer
2.1. Account opening, 2015.
2.2. Some old-school flow conceptualization and ideation, c2016.
2.3. Account opening, 2017.
How to give an online form a voice? Beginning in 2016 and over many years, back-end delivery systems, and brand re-inventions, we pushed our basic online account opening experience toward warmth, without sacrificing efficiency. For that to work, we focused on my own personal writing mantra: clarity before brevity. If you need more words to ensure user success, take them. Then, where appropriate, sprinkle in some euphony: craft and playfulness.
2.4. Account opening, 2023.
From 2016 to 2023, Huntington saw a dramatic shift toward online-based originations, with nearly 70% of new accounts being opened online. Naturally, larger societal forces inform that movement. Yet the statistic emphasizes the importance of applying iterative design processes and continual improvements to this space.
Our initial redesign (2.3) included a top ‘chalkboard’ for more informal, conversational content. That design came with a trade-off in the considerable vertical length of those pages, an attempt at reducing page count and clicks in our forms. Through data analysis and follow-up research with users, both those innovations were eliminated (2.4). Our ongoing aim is to improve the form’s readability, accessibility, and success rates while reducing development time.