Design: we saw that testers found the flow intuitive and could navigate back and forth, easily finding what they needed along the way. Which is good. We’ve aligned the new design to match up with the new Monzo navigation, so rather than learning a new way of using Monzo, testers were able to pick it up and feel comfortable right away. We need to improve how we compare information across paid subscription packages. It’s easier said than done on a mobile screen, so we’ll be going back to the drawing board to make sure things are visible and easily comparable.
Product marketing: my role is specifically around how we talk about our products so that our customers can understand them and identify value easily. Part of the research was asking testers to explain our packages back to us, or to imagine them explaining it to their friends at the pub. This helps us to understand how customers interpret these packages so we can align our design and messaging to that model. There were some interesting ideas that came out of this research around whether we talk about this as a subscription, account, or a card with lots of features. So I’ll be diving into this next.
Debit card: several of our team are in France at the moment testing our new debit card designs with our card manufacturer. This involved a process of printing dozens of individual designs and testing them stringently to see how they’d work in the real world. They’re spending three days there with the hope of settling on their top designs before bringing them back to London for our team to take a look at. We’re very excited about these.
We recognise you all want more detail on what we’re doing, but at this early stage we’re keeping a lot of this close to our chest. It’s not that we don’t want to share, we just think it’s sensible to keep these packages under wraps for as long as possible before we share them with the world.
And some non-product stuff: we had our first social as a team last week, getting together after work for some pizza. Everyone in the team gets along so well, which is a really nice thing when you think about it.
For testing cards - how is this done? For example can they simulate repeatedly inserting and removing from chip and pin terminals, ATMs etc? As a common complaint recently is that cards are poor quality (normal and Plus).
Entirely understandable position. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to get an additional layer of detail, but in the meantime this is a good update.
And presumably someone is testing how it holds up just left in their wallet in their back pocket being sat on all day. Most of my cards seem to have a slight bend now. But it isn’t really an issue as I tend not to use them as Google Pay is just easier.
Side question/request, can whomever closes the topic when the next update is out, please put a link to the new topic at the end of the thread. It seems to happen some weeks but not others, but is really helpful/convenient when there. Thanks.
Yeah, sorry. That’s normally a staff thing on these threads but as they hadn’t done it I did but it was just as I was on my way out of the office so I didn’t have time to go and get a link etc.
Apologies, forgot to close out last week’s chat. Thanks for doing that for us.
On cards, we’re playing around with where we put the numbers. There’s a few considerations and rules around what you can do, but we’ve got some ideas.
On timeline, we touched on this a bit in the last couple weeks but we’re trying to, very intentionally, take our time with this one. This means we won’t be pushing an MVP out the door for feedback so customer testing (like we’ve seen with other Monzo products) won’t be the same. We’ll obviously still test to make sure it works!
On testing, there are certain standards around durability and quality, so it’s a pretty stringent process of bending and scratching to best simulate a few years of card use.
If you can use the card more than once in an ATM, or place it down onto a surface without the numbers scratching off or the chip cracking, then you’re already in a better place then the previous batch
You’re about 10 steps ahead there I never received one that didn’t have defects fresh from the envelope - even my non-plus one that was replaced recently was poor.
Just stumbled upon HSBC Select and Cover. You pick a minimum of 3 Insurance’s then can add more with increased cost. Sounds similar to what should happen here. The base 3 are interchangeable too.
Also the insurances that Monzo use should be at least a decent provider. Ie Breakdown RAC/AA
Design: we saw that testers found the flow intuitive and could navigate back and forth, easily finding what they needed along the way. Which is good. We’ve aligned the new design to match up with the new Monzo navigation, so rather than learning a new way of using Monzo, testers were able to pick it up and feel comfortable right away. We need to improve how we compare information across paid subscription packages. It’s easier said than done on a mobile screen, so we’ll be going back to the drawing board to make sure things are visible and easily comparable.
Product marketing: my role is specifically around how we talk about our products so that our customers can understand them and identify value easily. Part of the research was asking testers to explain our packages back to us, or to imagine them explaining it to their friends at the pub. This helps us to understand how customers interpret these packages so we can align our design and messaging to that model. There were some interesting ideas that came out of this research around whether we talk about this as a subscription, account, or a card with lots of features. So I’ll be diving into this next.
Debit card: several of our team are in France at the moment testing our new debit card designs with our card manufacturer. This involved a process of printing dozens of individual designs and testing them stringently to see how they’d work in the real world. They’re spending three days there with the hope of settling on their top designs before bringing them back to London for our team to take a look at. We’re very excited about these.
I never received one that didn’t have defects fresh from the envelope - even my non-plus one that was replaced recently was poor.