For the last couple of months we have been learning how behavioral science can be used to improve financial products for everyone (for context, link to one of our blogs from last year). We have been doing an extensive amount of research and will start blogging on a regular basis to democratize the knowledge.
As we dive deeper into behavioral science, it is becoming clear to us that we need to incorporate application design into this process as well.
So today we are launching our Design Lab with the goal to help improve user experience of financial products.
---
Design Lab which will consist of Behavioral Scientists, UX Designers, and UI Engineers with the plan to accomplish the following:
Build UI as a Service (UIaaS) products
Last year we launched a proof of concept of our UI as a Service product line. The idea was to build customizable UI elements for different aspects of our APIs, which will give platforms building on top of Synapse a best of breed user experience.
Since our mission is to democratize best-in-class financial products for everyone, doing this well is of critical importance. Better UX will make financial products more intuitive, fun, and usable for everyone. Behavioral science will be instrumental here, so for that reason we are making the UIaaS product line a part of our Design Lab function¹.
Open Source
In order to ensure that what we learn has a real impact on the communities we serve, we will start to open source all the behavioral science and UX work we do. We will build something similar to iOS human interface guidelines for financial services, which will incorporate all of our behavioral science research.
Consult
The Design Lab team will work intimately with companies or non-profits working on financial inclusion products with the goal to help improve their services. Participating entities will have access to our behavioral science and UX resources, as a part of our service offering.
---
Personally, I am very excited about our Design Lab. So much that I will be spending all of my spare time with the Design Lab team². In my opinion, pulling this off is as important as back office automation, if not more³.
If you are as passionate about this as we are, we are still hiring for all the Design Lab positions here⁴:
Behavioral Scientists: Lever / AngelList
UX Designers: Lever / AngelList
UI Engineers: Lever / AngelList
---
[1] Over the last few months we have been working on quite a few UIaaS products and will start releasing them soon.
[2] The Design Lab team will be working with me directly and will help impact all Synapse products.
[3] Back Office automation reduces cost for best-in-class financial products, while better UX will make financial products more intuitive, fun, and usable for everyone.
[4] Current Design Lab team consists of 3 Behavioral Scientists, 2UX Designers and 3 UI engineers.
