Dear (none)Designer,

Welcome back to the twenty-first Design at Scale™ Newsletter – focusing on innovation and how design drives change in a large organisation or an agency.

A century-old fact is that banks, in many cases, are among the most profitable institutions, and they are driven to generate revenue, usually through the acquisition or integration of products or services, which obviously generates even more profit.

Some banks have survived for centuries, and that is why they have inherited the complexity that arises from simple contracts to digital contracts and multiple products and services that interact with each other. If we consider someone else's opinion that one system is better than the other, more secure, reliable, tested, certified, and regulated, then we arrive at a web of digital agreements that could be as complex as the microprocessor. Fun aside, it's quite challenging to do one job due to the necessary preconditions in a specific regulated environment. And at this point, we haven't even touched the customer data.

That is why banks reached a tipping point around the millennium, where we started seeing more design-led processes and the overall simplification of the message across all touchpoints to retain and help customers achieve their simple objectives – such as setting up or cancelling a direct debit.

Some banks are better than others. Some improved experiences are developed step by step and in small increments. In contrast, others reside in large departments with over 500 designers, lacking an understanding of the business environment and struggling to comprehend why regulatory risk and legal have a far greater influence over design and simple experience professionals.

Big ambitions often end up in big failures, as the very core of change in banking is an incremental one. Most profound changes occur not because of a great design, but because of well-communicated feasibility and adaptability to all additional requirements.

Inevitably, risk-averse individuals will choose big business to fulfil what's necessary within the obligatory requirements for employment under the umbrella and the safety that banks provide, which is why the majority of banks have attracted so many talents with a single precondition—the safety of an income.

This completely differs from anyone with a creative background; they create. Creative people thrive on the constant challenge of the status quo and their surroundings, including their employees. That is why the majority of design services within organisations like banks are run by non-designers who are only familiar with the term but rarely have gained experience through 10,000 hours of designing design propositions.

Despite the political battles a brand faces for its product or service, let alone for the entire brand, it's more about micro-orchestration that allows the brand to move in only one direction. The great opportunity lies in leveraging experience and improving user journeys, also known as "user journey transformations", to optimise the old 40- to 70-step process into five or ten clicks. This sounds like a huge improvement.

In this way, the experience improved, and a new brand was required to unlock the opportunities within the environment. More functional interfaces draw greater retention and a humanising factor in tone of voice, and the approach changed by the great storytelling bank to transform from a corporate machine into a more flexible, secure, and understanding institution providing financial services.

If the innovation was not possible in the old bank, the more ambitious and mature leaders have set out new small retail banks, allowing customers to experience the finance world through well-designed and carefully crafted experiences that start pushing the boundaries of Fintech to a greater, more connected world where people understand finance.

The literacy of money has always been an issue from both regulatory and investment perspectives; now, more than ever, it's becoming an expected feature.

For more information, please visit Designa at Scale™ – GRID Magazine, where you can find additional relevant articles that explore hyper-performing teams, self-organising teams of one, teams of 10, and teams of 100 that deliver the value proposition within a product-led environment.