The Vostok blog

Full disclosure: My bank is BBVA. It’s been that way since I arrived in Madrid 3 years ago. Why? I guess it was the bank closest to my house. Nothing else. No bank allegiances or bank favoritisms clouding my perspective. I also know the studio behind the app design, Fjord, and although we respect them immensely, there are no secret allegiances there either. Neither public nor private.

This is an honest account of a girl infinitely grateful that after zillions of years of inept bank management there is finally a space that allows her to get things done quickly and effortlessly. So here we go:

Why making an app for day to day transactions is better than making a web?
Apps are more constraint. They give users the perception that the space they’re handling is less like a labyrinth and more like a familiar and unchanging path. There is a limited amount of things you can do, you know what they are and how to do them. This makes tasks not only effortless but more efficient.

Why is this super important when it comes to managing your bank current account? Because I’m handling MY money, and I’m doing so in MY space, not BBVA’s. An app gives me more a sense of control and personalization than any web tab titled ‘YOUR account’, ‘YOUR profile’, ‘YOUR bank’. I want to feel reassured, secure, I want to feel in control. This might be just the same for an app that handles your photographs, your movies, your web clippings, but it’s even more so when you’re handling your finances.

Plus, the simplicity of apps forces super intricate processes to be stripped down to their bare bones. It’s the perfect milieu to put in practice analytic and synthetic design principles.

Things I like from a customer’s point of view:

• It’s secure without being a f* pain in the ass. It remembers my user number but not my password.
• I can favorite stuff. I no longer have to make a gargantuan effort to consciously ignore the thousand other elements and numbers calling my attention.
• The most common action ‘make a transfer’ is right in the menu. You don’t have to go hunting for it.
• The use of GPS. You’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s dark and you’re in desperate need of an ATM but a branch of your bank is nowhere to be seen. Not anymore.

Things I like the most from a design point of view:

• The use of color to convey information.
• The use of color gradients to help you focus your attention.
• The use of graphs. Lines give you a sense of the oscillations of your spendings and earnings. Bars give you a sense of the amount spent. Position of a bar (below or above the x-axis) tells you if what you’re looking at is income or expenditure.

And that’s it. This app is not fancy-shmanzy. It is what it is. It does what it’s supposed to do. To the team behind this product in BBVA and Fjord: My hat to you sirs.

If you’re interested, you can download the app here.