American Express Mobile App
Visual Design, UX
User Needs
The American Express app team would be the first design team to operate entirely in house, and work closely with development and product teams to realize a user-centered mobile experience. Given a broad mandate to shape aspects of the user journey from login to push messaging, we first identified core needs through market research, mobile analytics, and user interviews. We found that Amex mobile app users sought to accomplish tasks in three important areas:
Users want to know how much they owe and when they have to pay.
Users want to know how much they’ve spent recently and where.
Users want to know what they’re getting/earning as an American Express card member.
Goals
In addition to addressing these primary user needs, our team also sought to:
Create platform specific UX.
Maintain feature parity with the previously existing app experience.
Create an extensible IA that will support future features.
Address accessibility and device fragmentation head on, so as to support a wide range of devices.
Achieve meaningful simplicity.
I led the visual design of the first Android platform native mobile app from American Express. This project was part of a larger redesign of the mobile app across both Android and iOS, which sought to modernize the membership experience and present users with a clear interface organized around their most common tasks.
New content hierarchy
The previously existing app experience relied upon a dashboard design metaphor, presenting a large amount of information to customers in a single context. One of the primary exercises in the redesign was a re-evaluation of the content hierarchy of the app. Card sorting and other qualitative techniques were used to determine broad content categories that were understood by users.
The new design direction would a content hierarchy that divided the customer’s primary tasks into tabs accessible via the left sidebar. Presenting billing, recent activity, rewards and offer content in this manner allowed for a clear focus on the in information shown in each section.
Billing encompasses the current statement, past statements and past payments. A status graphic indicates when the current statement is due, and when it is past due. Users can view the balances that total their current statement and make a payment.
Activity presents all the transactions from the current billing cycle up to the current statement. A timeline metaphor reinforces the continuous nature of daily spending, and helps locate recent purchases contextually. Recent Charges are also totaled to indicate the amount of recent spend.
Rewards displays users' Membership Rewards points balance, the most prominent benefit of Amex membership. Users may redeem these points to pay for recent charges. Information is also presented on additional benefits associated with the particular card a user has.
Offers serves new and nearby Amex merchant offers, with the ability to sort by category. Users can see which offers they’re enrolled in, and how much money they are saving as a result, reinforcing the value of membership.
Accolades
Feature placement in Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
4.5 star rated app with over 4.6MM active Card Members, increasing monthly active users by 70% and daily active users by 93% over previous app release.
Users average 11 unique visits per month, almost triple the number of web visits per user.