Overview
In early 2021, we innitiated the Techcombank Mobile App revamp. The vision was to change the relationship with our customers so that we became a partner on their financial journey and enabled them to live their dreams. The old platform, F@st Mobile App, was incapable of deliver that vision due to the lack in experience strategy and technology infrastructure.
However, considering the fact that it had been on the market for almost a decade, and by that time, served up to 3.8M individual customers, there might be a huge risk of change aversion. Adding the stakeholders' high expectations, redesigning the mobile app dashboard (or home screen) was one of our biggest challenges at that time.
Role: Product designer
Timeline: Febuary to October, 2021
Experience vision
Aligned with the bank's strategy “Changing banking, changing lives”, the Mobile Dashboard is a trusted personal assistant who is always there to tell me what's important at any given moment.
On a daily basis, it gives me information in order to promptly make better decisions with confidence and cognitive ease. With micro-learning and actionable nudges, the PA helps me build up financial capacity, gradually guiding me towards financial wellbeing.
Diagnosing the "as-is" experience
1. Poor information architecture
By conducting heuristic evaluations, we quickly identified the problems of the old dashboard. Despite of more than 118 features and settings inside the app, it was poorly structured, which results in low discoverability, confused customers and no scalability. We ran a tree testing with 103 customers to verify the current information architecture (IA). Except for transferring features, the task success scores were low.
2. Lack of contextual information
The old dashboard was designed for transactional banking activities. There were no contextual and informative insights to support decision-making. It was impossible to implement PFM solutions which played a crucial part in the win-win relationship between Techcombank and our customers.
3. No emotional design
Customers could neither received personalized content nor customise their own dashboard.
Rethinking information architecture
1. Understand users’ mental model
Our first and highest prioity was to understand our users’ mental model when it comes to the app architecture. First, to identify groupings, we ran an open card sorting test with 117 customers. In the test, we provided customers with a list of 50 features and let them group into categories that make sense to them. The output was a drafted information architecture.
We later validate this structure by tree testing with another 328 customers. The result was the new information architecture, a bird's-eye view of how users go through our content.
2. Hub & spoke model
The hub and spoke information architecture allows us to leverage the journey-based model employed in Backbase - our vendor. This structure ensured scalability, flexibility, and alignment with our experience vision.
Design solutions
A. Simplified navigation for cognitive ease
We designed the navigation system around natural thumb zones, drawing on ergonomic and behavioral science research. By placing the most-used functions in a bottom navigation bar, we made them instantly accessible, reducing decision-making friction. This structure brought true cognitive ease to micro-moments of daily use, helping users act effortlessly.
B. Off-canvas menu for overflow
Simplicity doesn't mean fewer features; it means managing complexity with care. To keep the dashboard clean without sacrificing depth, we placed secondary features inside an off-canvas menu. This followed the principle of "Shrink, Hide, Embody," coordinating choices in a way that avoids overwhelming the user while maintaining full access when needed.
C. Card-based interaction model: Modular, scalable, experimental
We adopted a material cards model for the Dashboard, creating modular interaction blocks that allow dynamic personalization without sacrificing structural clarity. This model supports seamless scalability — making it easy to add new features or journeys without a major redesign. Each card acts as a flexible, independent unit, enabling rapid experimentation while keeping the overall experience cohesive and harmonious.
D. Assistance at a glance
The Dashboard was reimagined not just as a gateway, but as a daily assistant answering three key questions: What’s happened? What’s about to happen? What should I do next? We prioritized digestible updates, actionable insights, and proactive protection to help users quickly absorb information and make confident decisions in just a few seconds.
E. Habit-building core
To drive meaningful engagement, we embedded habit loops into the Dashboard experience. It became the launchpad for everyday actions like checking balances or tracking savings goals, with variable rewards and subtle nudges reinforcing positive financial behaviors over time. This strategy helped build lasting user habits aligned with financial wellbeing.
F. Emotional connection via customization
Recognizing the power of the IKEA effect — where people value what they personalize — we introduced Dashboard background customization. Even offering a curated set of backgrounds allowed users to feel a sense of ownership. This small emotional touch contributed to stronger satisfaction, deeper engagement, and a higher sense of personal connection with the app.
Results
1. Highly discoverable and learnable
Throughout the whole process, we kept ideating and usability testing our solutions with real customers. We had more understanding of what worked and what did not. After the product was officially launched to the market on Dec 2021, we are confident to say that the new IA has significantly improved the discoverability and learnability of the Dashboard. Customers find it super easy navigating back and forth between screens.
2. Effortless to use
The customers noticed big changes within the app, but considered it positive. When we ran multiple usability tests with users, the majority of them found it extremely easy to look for brand new products or features with the least effort.
3. Simple, modern, concise and refreshing were the most commonly used words when we asked our customers to describe the new Techcombank app on the surveys.
4.4/5App store ratings
4.6/5In-app ratings End of Mar 2022
Awards
The Good Design Awards, Mobile Application 2022
Global Finance, Best Consumer Digital Bank, Vietnam 2022
Things to improve
1. Performance issues
We faced several technical constraints during the development process, which results in the performance of the app. This might affect the user experience, for example, delayed loading and non real-time data processing. Our goal for the next releases is to gradually improve the app performance and enhance micro interactions.
2. Personalised experience
The design goal of the dashboard is to offer a personalized experience and suggest the next best actions for each of our customers based on their behaviours on the app. Besides huge UX research and design scope, it also requires massive support from the technology and data infrastructures.
Self-reflection
It took our team 9 months, with hundreds of design prototypes to finally launched the product to the market. So far, redesigning Techcombank Mobile Dashboard is the most challenging project I have participated in, considering the design strategies, stakeholders’ high expectations, technology constraints, and managing the change aversion effect, internally and externally.
Though there will be numerous enhancements and improvements for our product in the near future, I am extremely delighted with how the Dashboard turns out. During the design process, I had the opportunity to practice Dieter Rams Ten Principles of “Good Design”, and witness the actual outcomes driven by those principles. We strived to deal with ambiguity, conquer complex constraints, remove the impediments, in order to deliver a simple and aesthetic experience to our users.
Dieter Rams Ten Principles of “Good Design”
The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
It clarifies the products structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the users self-expression.
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years - even in today's throwaway society.
Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
Less, but better - because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
Thank you for reading.