Íslandsbanki • App prototype
Design as acceleration to the future.
Íslandsbanki, the Bank of Iceland, used to offer their main services through two different apps. Bank accounts, loans and transfers in one app, and debit- and credit cards in another.
This approach was not very user friendly, for many reasons, and it soon became evident that combining all their services in one app would prove to be a better solution in the long run. How a single app would work was not necessarily clear, so a prototype was made to test the idea.
A broken experience
Íslandsbanki had recently gone through a rebrand, and Kolibri worked with their marketing department to design a digital appearance and design system – in close collaboration with Brandenburg design agency that provided the original branding for print.
When their new website was launched it soon became evident that the experience of using two different apps was broken and outdated, both in terms of look as well as functionality. It was even more pressing now to combine all of the bank‘s services in one app, so a project was launched with that end goal in mind.
Focusing on a comprehensive digital service experience.
Prototyping one joint app
Work on a comprehensive digital design system was already far along. That made it easy to start piecing together a prototype for an app that provided a user experience that was coherent with the bank‘s rebrand, f.x. on their new website.
The first step was to map the functionality of the two apps, distinguish what was missing between them and fill in the blanks. Various versions were tested using sketched interfaces. Consequently, an interactive prototype was designed.
During this process, many innovative and user-friendly features were tested for functions like transfers, bill payment options and onboarding for various bank services.
Pushing for progress.
Prototypes serve many purposes. They are used to both verify rough ideas and sometimes to build meticulously accurate mock-ups of products or services.
In this case, the goal was to verify new concepts and new policies to prepare a glimpse of the future where the focus would be on user-centred design. It‘s nice to see that according to the latest beta version of a new, joint Íslandsbanki app, those policies have been followed by everyone involved. A comprehensive digital experience is forming.