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Gap Analysis in Fin Apps & Redesign of Ai1 app using the findings.
Platform reimagines everyday banking - Ai1 App
A redesigned banking app that goes beyond transactions to support users with clarity, empathy, and intelligence. By combining AI-powered insights, emotional guidance, and personalized experiences, the platform helps users understand their spending, manage money mindfully, and make confident financial decisions—turning digital banking into a trusted financial companion.
Mobile App
UX
Gap Analysis
Overview
🌏 Setting the scene
As Challenge, we set out to identify meaningful gaps in everyday digital experiences and reimagine them through thoughtful, user-centered design. For this challenge, we focused on digital banking - an application category deeply embedded in daily life, especially in India’s rapidly growing digital payment ecosystem.
Every day, millions of users rely on banking apps to send money, pay bills, and track balances. While these apps have become fast and convenient, they often fail to support users beyond transactions. Financial data is presented in fragmented, technical formats, leaving users to interpret patterns, manage budgets, and make decisions on their own.
⁉️ Why Fin Apps??
The emergence of Digital Payment in India
India’s payment landscape has rapidly shifted from traditional banking to digital-first behavior. From 2010 to 2024, all digital modes grew, but UPI became the clear leader—rising from 0% to over 75% (Report from emergingpaymentsasia.org) of transactions. Report Link - click here
This shift shows that users now prefer fast, simple, and mobile-friendly payment experiences, pushing fintech apps ahead of traditional banking apps. As digital payments become everyday habits, users expect smarter, more intuitive financial tools—creating space for evolved, user-centric fin apps.
2010 – 2015
2015 – 2020
2020 – 2024
Setting out to solve
🧩 The Secondary Research
To design a more meaningful and supportive digital banking experience, it was important to first understand the broader ecosystem of digital payments and banking behavior in India. As part of this exploration, five widely used digital banking apps were studied to understand how users currently interact with financial products, where they struggle, and what expectations they bring to modern banking experiences.
IndSMART
from Indian Bank
All in One(Ai1)
from Canara Bank
YONO SBI
from SBI Bank
HDFC Bank
from HDFC Bank
iMobile
from ICICI Bank
Note: Each app was analyzed using a tailored approach to uncover its unique experience gaps.
Indian Bank - IndSMART
I chose the Indian Bank app because I’ve been using it since my school days, and many schools and colleges prefer it for handling student accounts and scholarships. This makes it personally relevant and widely used among students, which adds value to analyzing its user experience.
Canara Bank - Ai1 App(All in One App)
For Ai1 app i used Heuristic Evaluation - Ten Commandments for Helpful Expert Analysis
Note: Showcasing only 2 apps data for the case study
Arranging the pieces
📲 What are the Challenges in Digital payment??
Stepping away from individual apps and focusing on the broader domain, the research was synthesized into four key challenges currently faced by the banking industry - areas that require improvement.
Limited Awareness of Spending Patterns
Users make quick digital payments without seeing clear categories or habits, creating a need for AI insights and smart tagging.
data from arXiv 2024
Lack of Support and Simple Information
Most apps show raw data but offer little help in understanding it. Users need clearer, simpler explanations & supportive guidance to make sense of their spending.
data from ResearchGate
No Conscious Sense of Money Spent
People often don’t register what they’re spending on or how much they’re spending, leading to unconscious overspending and a need for gentle emotional reminders.
data from JETIR Study
Financial Information Is Scattered
With transactions spread across multiple apps, users lack a unified view of their money — reinforcing the need for auto-categorisation and AI summaries.
data from ResearchGate
🙋🏻♂️ Evolving User Needs
Users have evolved from the Gen X to Millennials, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha - and their expectations have evolved with them. As people change, their financial needs, behaviours, and digital habits naturally shift, pushing banking experiences to adapt and grow alongside them.
Ease, Speed & Effortless Use
Banking needs to be quick, simple, and easy on phone. Clear, easy-to-understand information without jargon.
Safety, Trust & Transparency
Clear explanations for security checks.
Reliable fraud alerts and easy recovery steps.
Personalization & Predictive Help
Show information that matters personally. Reminders for bills, goals, and important tasks.
Connected & Unified Financial Life
Ally financial information (banking, credit, bills, investments) in one place. Easy ways to manage shared finances or expenses.
Financial Control, Guidance & Wellness
Manage money, not just transactions.
Smart Assistance
Support that understands my question in simple language.
⚙️ Gaps Vs Needs & Wants
As digital banking continues to evolve, there is a growing gap between what users currently experience and what they actually need and expect. As connecting the dots, mapping the gaps vs needs and wants:
Pieces getting its place
⁉️ How Might We statements
Based on the gaps identified and the evolving needs and expectations of users, the following How Might We statements frame the design challenges as open-ended opportunities. These statements help shift the focus from problems to possibilities, guiding ideation toward solutions that are user-centered, empathetic, and aligned with real financial behaviors.
How Might We statements
• provide budgeting, savings, and goal-tracking tools
that empower users to build healthier financial habits
within the app?
• transform static help content into conversational,
guided support that assists users in real time when
they feel stuck?
• design an interface that accommodates diverse
languages, abilities, and device interactions so every
user can navigate comfortably?
• connect external services and apps to create a fluid,
end-to-end financial ecosystem experience & also
improve in-person banking?
• incorporate positive, emotionally resonant feedback
that celebrates user progress and makes the
experience feel more human?
• ensure core app functions remain fast, reliable, and
usable even under poor connectivity conditions?
• simplify the app’s information architecture and unify
iconography so users can intuitively find what they
need without cognitive overload?
• enable users to customize their dashboard and receive
contextual, intelligent insights that feel personally
relevant and timely?
• communicate security steps and error states in a
clear, human, and reassuring tone that builds trust
rather than intimidation?
• reduce the friction in login, KYC, and fund-transfer
flows so users can complete critical tasks quickly and
confidently?
• proactively surface intelligent reminders and
transaction suggestions that help users without feeling
intrusive?
• give users clear visibility and control over how their
data and AI-driven personalizations are used within
the app?
👀 POV
Answering the How Might We questions became the turning point of the project, helping us uncover a strong Point of View and crystallize a solution rooted in real user needs.
Adaptive UI that reorganizes itself based on user behavior (e.g., tasks you use most surface automatically).
Generative UI assistants that rearrange navigation on request (“Make my home screen simpler”).
AI co-pilot for personal finances that understands habits and goals and briefs you each morning.
Emotionally intelligent microcopy engines that adjust tone based on user anxiety or confusion.
Security “explainability overlays” that explain why authentication is needed (“We’re verifying this because it’s a new device”).
Biometric-fusion authentication combining behavior, voice cadence, grip pattern, and device signals—while keeping raw data on-device.
Personal Financial Assistant delivering proactive, contextual financial nudges (bill reminders, fraud alerts, savings opportunities, goals).
Gamified wellness journeys with personalized challenges and rewards.
Multilingual voice-first banking assistant that works offline and on-device to preserve privacy.
Instant KYC through secure holographic capture (depth + liveliness + ID verification).
Solution from pieces
🎨 Design
HOME PAGE
User-Centric Feature Grouping
Features are grouped by user intent and financial goals, making discovery easier and creating a more focused banking experience.
Basic Information
Most looking details that i used to take my passbook for :D
name as in passbook •
IFSC Code for online transaction •
All other major account details a user need
User-Controlled Personalization
Instead of a single tap, users must hold and swipe to edit quick actions—encouraging deliberate customisation and preventing accidental changes.
Three most important option’s which user may needed
AI-Powered Recommendations
Recommendations are generated from transaction history, recurring payment patterns, and user behaviour to surface relevant actions at the right moment.
Context-Aware Banking Dashboard
Designed to provide instant visibility into accounts while reducing navigation effort and cognitive load.
Personalized Action Center
Quick actions are tailored to the selected account type, helping users access frequently used services with minimal effort.
Additional slots allow users to pin frequently used actions
surface the most relevant features.
Simple instructions and limits help users customize actions with confidence
Account details and the balance in it
Multiple language support for getting assisted or support
Shows the offer’s that the bank can provide to the user – personalised ones
Quick Options for the user to get info from chatbot
Call support as a first priority with pop vibrant card.
Microcopy for informing user
Spending summary chips - Top two spending's will be displayed others were combined as one
rephrasing for better understandability of the users
• Sent or Received money (bold
for better visibility)
• Bank name of whom send or
received
• To or from which bank.
• UPI ID
• Available balance after
transaction
Adding time and tag for better recollect
SUPPORT PAGE
ACCOUNT INFO PAGE
💫 Our Beautiful Outcomes
Crafting Experience that feel Effortless to be in
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Copyright @ Portfolio by Ram
Ramakrishnan Santhanam