Help a Bangkok based bank better understand the changing behaviours and core needs of their customers in order to design meaningful and engaging experiences. This project was run in collaboration with Eight INC – a human led experience design agency.
Designing the future of a national bank targeting the mass market, Team Eight faced the challenge of being limited 3 personas that were defined internally in 2019 . Post pandemic, it became increasingly essential to revisit these personas – to base them on real life insights and conversations, especially considering societal and behavourial shifts as a result of the pandemic.
Team Heist was brought in to build this understanding and help refine/ redefine the design strategy. The research was focussed on understanding attitudes towards personal finances, lifestyles, values and aspirations for our core target audience. The goal was to use these learnings as the foundation for building revolutionary online and offline experiences for the bank.
Team Eight and Team Heist worked together in the Bangkok studio as well as back in Singapore to redefine the key personas and craft core opportunities for each target group. These were then presented to the client for decision making, informing future design strategy.
For this project, Team Heist built a studio in Bangkok and used social screening as well as community based infiltration to recruit a range of users. These included a wide range of fascinating individuals – from a hyper successful social impact start up founder to an individual bending laws for financial gains.
We used an agile design research approach that focussed on setting up a pop up studio in Bangkok. We quickly ramped up an infield team using ethnography such as in-depth interviews, intercept interviews and observations at key banking and retail locations. This coupled with cultural immersion – delivered fast and effective understanding of Thai banking customers.
For the indepth interviews, we spoke with a range of potential customers – from young students who had set up their first bank accounts with their universities to successful entrepreneurs, managing multiple bank accounts, properties and sources of income with ease. Much of our conversations revolved around access, education as well as deeply rooted beliefs and behaviours related personal finance.
Following the fieldwork in Bangkok, a war room was set up at Eight Singapore Studio to synthesize key learnings from our 3 core activities. This allowed a broader team of architects, strategists, environmental and digital designers to engage directly with the customers, their pain points and key behaviors. Given the rich ethnography, we now had access to real insight, from real people. This fundamentally changed our team and client’s relationship with the Thai banking customer – empowering us with a greater empathy for subsequent phases of design work.
These collaborative conversations between Heist and Eight led to strategic opportunities and informed a Gap Analysis and Planning Report with quick actionable next steps to create meaningful banking experiences for the Thai customer of the future.
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