User Experience and User Interface (UX/UI) Analysis — HDFC Bank
Banking on mobile apps that have revolutionized how we handle money in the past 10 years. The world has moved from moving cash in large piles to a couple of clicks to send money across anywhere in the world. Payment apps have developed a lot since their inception and a lot more resources are spent in their design and development now. Let’s analyze the app of one of the largest banks in India.
HDFC Bank is the biggest private sector bank in India which means they have millions of users who use its mobile applications daily. This also means they have a large budget and a large team for designing and developing the application.
Login Screen
A banking app usually has a very straightforward login screen, since you would already know your login details. The same is the case with the HDFC app. It remembers the Customer ID after you have logged in once, which is a necessity in a secure app, where the user has to log in every time they open the app and there is a timer-based auto-logout. There is a small thing that they can improve here is that the Customer ID is numerical so the numerical keyboard should open when you try to input it, maybe at least the alphanumerical one.
Navigation
The app has a sidebar style navigation, which is one of the popular styles of primary navigation and very similar to Google’s Material Design specs.
Every collapsible item in the menu has a subheader displaying the containing sub-menu items, which helps the user to go to the correct sub-menu item. There are a lot of items in the menu that are not features of the app but advertisements for other products of the bank which I think should be given a separate place in the app and not pollute the primary navigation.
The overall UX of the primary navigation is good, but the UI does not look as polished as it could be.
Home Screen
The home screen has 2 sections: Overview and Favorites. The Overview section just shows your account balance, and otherwise is very empty and could be improved by adding additional data relevant to the user. The Favorites section contains saved transfer instructions for the transaction that are done repeatedly by the user and can be easily accessed from the home screen.
Accounts
The accounts page displays the information of your savings account in the form of a card. It clearly displays major info on the card that is account number and account balance. There are recommended actions also provided below which the user may want to do, although these actions are present in their own sections in the navigation bar. It is good to think about what the users may want to do next and show them the options at the bottom of the page.
Clicking on the card opens a new page with a card containing the same information with additional details collapsed. These details are shown in a tabular fashion but without any visual hierarchy. The same card could be displayed in the main accounts screen and the additional step in the flow could be avoided.
The recent transactions are collapsed by default, but since the users want to view details of their account they will already want that information displayed and remove the extra step. And these transactions can also be easily shown on the last page. Recent transactions are also shown in a vertical fashion which can get very long to scroll. This can be easily solved by adding pages to the list.
Although the overall UX of this section is okay and usable, but the UI is again not polished.
Money Transfer
With a quick look, we can see that a lot of features are present on the page but without a proper hierarchy. They could have been separated with the help of tabs or other smart usages of UI elements. Starting a transfer which is the main feature of the page is hidden behind another click which is redundant.
Let’s see how the flow of a transfer looks like. While making a transfer the balance of the account is displayed at the top which is good as the user doesn’t have to remember it. A transfer can be made by 2 different modes, the UX of which can be improved with the help of tabs. Today’s date which is info is shown as an input box which is confusing for the user, it should be displayed just as text. After adding all the details, a confirmation screen is opened which is good so that the user does not accidentally make a transfer. Resetting the form can be done by a cross button in front of the payee, but can be made a bit clearer with a text button.
Payees list shows very little info and the user has to click on it to get more info. these can be easily made into cards so that users can find correct payee fast
Cards
Following the same pattern as before, the first screen for cards can contain a lot more information and the next set of information is always another click away. All the information for cards can be easily presented on the same page. It is good that by default they hide the inactive cards and the users can check them out if they want to.
Summary
HDFC Banking app is a very stable and usable app, and in the end, it helps the users manage the finances from the palm of their hand. But it seems like they have not invested much in UX design of the application. With the kind of budget, the largest private bank of India has, a lot can be improved in the UX and UI of the app
