FCT Microfinance Bank

FCT Microfinance Bank wanted a mobile banking application for the unbanked, specifically targeting users with low digital literacy. The design challenge was to produce something that anyone could use, regardless of their familiarity with smartphones or digital financial services, without the product feeling patronising or stripped of useful functionality.

The starting point was understanding the actual user, not a generic low-income demographic. I built user personas grounded in what FCT MFB shared about their customer base and supplemented this with research into how this user segment interacts with mobile interfaces. The consistent finding was that modern app conventions, including common navigation patterns, micro-interactions, and visual hierarchy assumptions, are not universally legible. What designers treat as intuitive is often a learned behavior.

The design went through four to five rounds of structured usability testing with external participants who matched the target user profile. This was paid live testing, not internal review. Each round generated specific, actionable findings that fed directly into the next iteration.

The transfer flow

In the first iteration, the transfer flow asked users to enter an amount on one screen and account details on the next. Testing revealed that users consistently wanted to adjust the amount after entering account details, and the back-navigation to do so was causing frustration and abandonment. I redesigned the flow to allow amount editing within the same view as account confirmation, eliminating the context switch.

The loans calculator

The initial loans flow featured a slider that updated the loan amount and projected repayment in real time as the user dragged it. The interaction was technically elegant but failed consistently in testing. Users in this segment were not familiar with slider inputs as a data entry mechanism and did not trust that the numbers updating in real time were accurate. I replaced it with a standard input field and removed the animated elements. Task completion rates improved immediately.

The design was fully completed and validated through the usability testing programme before the project was suspended due to a commercial dispute with the core banking provider. The validated design files remain available.