Think of any top FinTech startup today and good design is at the foundation of what they do. The internet age has shifted the responsibilities of a designer from visual production to full-blown organizational strategy, and for good reason. Sam Beushausen, Creative Director and Product Designer at Ferst Capital Partners, gives us his unique perspective on what makes design such a crucial part of building a successful FinTech company.

1. How great design talent will help you
move faster and build better products
in one of technology’s hottest domains.
DesignDesign in FinTech

2. First things first - designers are not artists.
A designer’s job is to get users to perform tasks
with the least amount of friction possible. They
use many of the same tools as artists- visual
hierarchy, font, balance - but their goal is totally
different.
What are Designers?
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

3. Uber allows you to order a taxi with two clicks. Airbnb
makes it so that you can rent your apartment with ZERO
interaction with your renter. The bar for user experience
has been risen time and time again to the point where
excellence in design is now a baseline expectation for
a new product. The financial services sector has
lagged behind SIGNIFICANTLY in this field, and as a
result, users are now willing to try new products.
Great Design is
an Expectation
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

4. This, in turn, has created an opportunity for FinTech
companies whereby a great experience can be a
differentiating factor. Designers are uniquely
positioned to deliver this experience because they
know how to connect with people on an emotional
level, and a positive emotional makes a user...
Opportunity!
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

5. 6x more likely to buy a product
12x more likely to recommend the company
and 5x more likely to forgive a mistake
Let that sink in.
A positive emotional experience makes users...
DesignInTech Report 2016 KPCB
Design in FinTech

6. ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.
FinTech companies face many challenges that startups
in other verticals don’t have to worry about. Building a
rapport of trust and security with the customer, following
government security regulations, onboarding the
customer quickly despite these regulations - these are
All areas where a designer can minimize friction and
Deliver positive emotional experiences.
How do they do it?
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

7. FinTech companies need access to your
most personal information; design can help
create a culture of trust.
# 1 Design Bolsters Legitimacy
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

8. Robinhood offers free stock trading - significant
because you previously had to pay $7-10 per trade. In
order to show consumers that their product was not too
good to be true, they launched a product demo in the
year before their release. Within 30 days they had
100,000 waitlist signups, which grew to over 700,000
waitlist signups before they even launched a product.
Example: Robinhood
Waitlist Product Launch RobinHood
Design in FinTech

9. 700,000 Signups
Before product launch!
How’s that for legitimacy?
Waitlist Product Launch RobinHood
Design in FinTech

10. The initial reaction to a new type of financial product is
disbelief. If you can show the public that you are not
only building a product, but you are using the best
design and engineering talent to do it, your chances of
success are magnified many times over.
Lesson
Waitlist Product Launch RobinHood
Design in FinTech

11. Signing up for a financial services product can
be like ripping off the world’s longest bandaid.
Great design can take a traditionally painful
process and make it seem enjoyable.
# 2 Design Reduces Friction
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

12. In order to sign a customer up for a financial product,
they have to go through a gamut of barriers designed
to protect them - KYC questions, background and
credit checks for AML, submitting government ID for
investments, signing terms and conditions - if you are
unable to make this process streamlined, you will lose
your users and they will never come back. If you can
make something like buying insurance easy - and even
enjoyable (yes, it’s possible!) - you will be able to obtain
more customers.
What Friction?
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

13. Example: Lemonade
Lemonade is an insurance company with a 28.63% click
through rate. That means nearly 1 in 3 people that visit their
site start the process of buying their product. (compared to
a usual ~10-15%). Of the people that start buying insurance
15% of site visitors actually buy a policy. These numbers
have been attributed to Lemonade’s intuitive sign-up
process, dominated by simple backgrounds and a single,
bold call to action advancing the user through each page.
Remember when I said that it was possible to get
somebody to enjoy buying insurance?
Lemonade Launch Metrics Exposed!
Design in FinTech

14. Lemonade Launch Metrics Exposed!

15. 15% of visitors bought insurance
and actually enjoyed doing it.
That’s great design at work.
Lemonade Launch Metrics Exposed!
Design in FinTech

16. When the process for buying your product (or signing up to
your service) is an enjoyable one, you will have a larger
percentage of people completing that process. When you
have a reliably high conversion rate, it allows you to focus
on attracting more traffic, which will in turn lead to more
profits down the line.
Lesson
Lemonade Launch Metrics Exposed!
Design in FinTech

17. Having a highly structured process for
eliminating assumptions is important if you want
to build a product that consumers actually want.
# 3 Build, Test, Learn - Design Sprint
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

18. (ideas to satisfy need)(problem)
What typically happens in teams of all sizes is that when a new product or set of features is
being discussed, everybody has their own opinions on what should be built. Most of the time,
these opinions aren’t based on anything empirical, but team members hold on to them as if
they were factual nonetheless. The main value of a design sprint is to shortcut the endless
debate cycle and eliminate the assumptions that your team has through iterations.
Google Ventures Design Sprint
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

19. On the first day, you identify the problem, your
constraints, and your goals - it’s important that all team
members are on the same page. Then invite real people
to try the solution you come with on Friday.
Identify the problem
problem
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

20. Next, everybody designs their OWN solutions to the
problem. It is important not to groupthink or brainstorm so
that as many divergent solutions emerge as possible. Write
copy, place images - flush ideas out as much as possible.
Sketch out solutions
ideas
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

21. Vote on singular solutions or amalgamations of others - it’s
important to narrow it down and choose one to prototype.
Narrow them down
The best ideas
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

22. Build your high-fidelity prototype - it’s important that it’s
usable - so that on Friday you can test it. Sometimes you
can hit a homerun on the first shot, but most often you get
a reaction akin to this:
Prototype
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

23. What does
it do?
Where do
I click?!
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

24. All feedback is incredibly valuable! This is the test AND learn phase. You find out what
the problem is and iterate until your users are satisfied with the solution. Then, once
again, you can identify the problem, tease out solutions, and start the sprint. This
allows you to weed out assumptions, and build better products.
Day 5: Test and Learn
(ideas to satisfy need)(problem)
The Design Sprint
Design in FinTech

25. Less assumptions =
Less development costs,
faster time to market
Good design eliminates many assumptions.
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

26. You only think you know what customers are looking for
until you actually test it. By continuously creating
hypotheses, building a low-fidelity product that can test
those hypotheses, and then testing the product with real
consumers, you will be able to eliminate your assumptions
and build the best possible product.
Lesson
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

27. In summary...
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

28. More signups
Higher conversion rates
Lower dev cost and time
A great designer will enable...
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

29. This means designers are not just
nice to have, they’re necessary to
build great products.
Design in FinTech
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

30. Questions? Feedback?
Let us know in the comments below.
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.

31. Join our Meetup Group to see upcoming events & livestreams:
meetup.com/FCP-Studio-Montreal-FinTech-meetup/
JOIN US
www.fcp.studio / ©2016 Ferst Capital Partners. All Rights Reserved.