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Zelle®a fast, safe

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Ps overview

Overview

Overview

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Design

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User Testing

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Prototype

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Evaluation

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Reflection

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Introduction

Zelle® is a Fast, Safe and Easy

Way to send money directly between almost any checking or savings accounts in the U.S., typically within minutes’.

With just an email address or U.S. mobile phone number, you can send money to people you trust, regardless of where they bank.

Zelle is fast
Zelle users

Who The Users Were

Who the users were

Mobile-First Digital Natives:

Tech-savvy users who want everything at their fingertips, including instant biometric login and confirmation of any payment with a single touch of their smartphone.

Small Business Owners & Freelancers:

Entrepreneurs who use Zelle to send money to clients quickly and without fees, so they need convenient transaction history and the ability to share a payment request with a QR code to receive money from customers.

Risk-Averse & Security-Conscious Customers:

Customers who value security above all else and want to ensure that their money is only transferred to the intended recipient with additional safety measures, such as two-step verification and bank-level encryption.

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Design Process

Design Process

Discovery & Compliance Research

Analyzed user workflows, financial indicators, and the US regulatory environment (ADA/WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility laws, GLBA cross-selling regulations, and SOC 2 standards) to design an accessible and secure platform.

Usability Testing & Refinement

Conducted several rounds of usability testing with real-life users and stakeholders to optimize the task success rate and cognitive walkthrough and address special cases.

Information Architecture & Empathy Mapping

Prioritized cash flow, liquidity, and transaction-related widgets to build a financial dashboard according to the users’ daily management needs.

Wireframing & Rapid Prototyping

Produced set of low- and high-fidelity wireframes to prototype key interactions and support intuitive navigation between financial accounts, transfers, and reports.
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User Problem

User Problem

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Stephen S. Redmond

Dental Hygienist

Zelle transaction insight/history cards typically only show a bare-bones layout: a recipient/sender name, a timestamp, and an amount. Users often write vague memos (e.g., “Dinner” or “Stuff”) because the input field is small and unprompted.
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Robert J. Malone

Warehouse Supervisor

Because Zelle operates embedded inside over 2,000 different banking apps alongside a legacy standalone app experience, the design of “Insight Cards” or activity feeds changes drastically depending on the user’s bank.
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Stewart D. Graham

Dividend Clerk

There are no fast-action dispute entry points directly accessible from the insight card interface, forcing users to navigate through convoluted menus to report unauthorized or fraudulent activity.
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Ksenia S. Williams

Administrator

While Zelle payments cannot be reversed once sent, the insight cards for unfamiliar recipients or suspicious accounts currently lack critical safety features. They fail to offer post-transaction, educational tips, or direct access to fast-action dispute channels right from the card interface.
Zelle Ideation

Ideation

Ideation & UX Strategy

Core Objectives & Value Proposition
  • Shift from transactional to behavioral: Move Zelle from an application that people open only to move money to a financial assistant that is used daily.
  • Provide contextual awareness: Spend and receive money insights that are relevant/important to the user at the moment they need them (e. g. , right after a purchase or at the end of a month).
  • Do not require high cognitive load: Follow the “one idea per card” rule so that the user can quickly understand how much they spent or received in a particular category within 3 seconds.
Conceptual Card Categories & UI Layouts

Top Line: send and receive money
Header: Title + Image
Body: Short description about product

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Research & Insight

Research Insights

Personality

Extrovert

Introvert

Personality

Thinking

Feeling

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Sensing

Intuition

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Judging

Perceiving

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Background & Demographics
  • Name: Marcus Chen
  • Age: 28
  • Occupation: Graphic
  • Designer
  • Behavior: Tech-savvy, budget-conscious, relies heavily on peer-to-peer (P2P) apps to split costs with roommates and friends.
Goals
  • Quickly identify past transactions without opening a separate budgeting spreadsheet.
  • Leave clear, descriptive notes or tags on payments so he can remember the purpose of the transfer later.
  • Easily differentiate between recurring payments (like rent) and one-off expenses.
Frustrations & Pain Points
  • Vague Memos: The current Zelle transaction card only shows a name and a generic or missing memo (e.g., “Dinner” or left blank), causing confusion down the line.
  • Buried History: Finding a specific transaction from months ago requires digging through fragmented bank app menus rather than a clean, dedicated P2P insight hub.
  • Anxiety Over Status: When sending money to a friend who hasn’t used Zelle before, the “Pending” state card gives no helpful breakdown of why it’s stuck or what action is needed.

Redesign Insight Cards

To redesign insight cards and revise illustrations

Make it better looking: The UI of the legacy solution is outdated and does not correspond to our modern brand image. By redesigning it, we will give the cards a more appealing appearance.

Make text more comfortable to read: The text on the cards was too small, which caused a bad user experience.

Establish consistent typographic hierarchy: The old cards lacked typography, which made it hard to understand what information was more important at first glance.

Update the graphics on cards: Graphics in the legacy cards need to be redesigned to correspond to the new design system and brand image and tell a story about the insight on the card without being overwhelming.

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Ideation

Ideation and Mind Mapping

Ideation

Smart Automation & Shortcuts

  • Quick-Split card after a group dinner receipt scan.
  • One-tap templates for frequent payees (e.g., “Babysitter 
- $50”).
  • Low-balance alert: “Your balance is low; request pending funds from John?”

Behavioral & Spending Insights

  • You usually split rent with Sarah on the 1st—want to send now?
    Monthly P2P
  • Summary: You sent 40% more to friends this month.
  • Recurring payment trackers (subscriptions shared with family).
Zelle Identity

Identity

Identity
Identity
Zelle Illustrations

Illustrations

Old Illustrations

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Final Illustrations

Illustration is contained in a rectangle or the symbol with a solid background of gray, blue, light brown and red.
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Visuals

Final Visuals Of Zelle Insight Cards

Use anywhere; it is accepted to make in-store, online, and phone purchases.
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Insight Cards Mobile View

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Zelle Widgets

Widgets can be added to your phone’s home as a quick way to access certain information from apps without having to open the app itself.

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Zelle Accessibility

Core Accessibility

Core Accessibility Principles & Implementation

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Perceivable

Perceivable (Clear to See & Hear)

Color & Contrast: Text and background color combinations on insight cards must meet a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text to prevent issues for users with low vision.

Dynamic Font Scaling: Cards must dynamically resize when a user adjusts their device-level system font scaling, without clipping text or overlapping UI boundaries.

Operable

Operable (Easy to Navigate)

Plain Language: Avoid overly dense financial jargon in predictive insights.

Screen Reader Flow: Assistive tech must read the card logically—stating the context, the insight, and the actionable button clearly (e.g., “Insight: Send 500 dollars”).

Collaboration & Handoff

Cross-Functional Alignment: Partnered closely with product managers and iOS/android engineers early in the design phase to align on technical constraints, accessibility and zelle brand design system.

Streamlined Design Systems: Delivered comprehensive, pixel-perfect, figma component libraries with responsive layout behaviors, autolayout and interactive prototypes to reduce ambiguity.

Iterative Dev-Handoff: Facilitated iterative handoff sessions and design QA during implementation to ensure edge cases like loading states, error handling or long name truncation were flawlessly executed.

Outcomes & Impact

Enhanced Financial Clarity: Enabled users to better understand their spending patterns and peer-to-peer transactions at a glance.

Increased Engagement: Improved day-over-day engagement with the insights module which drove better product virality within the larger banking ecosystem.

Design Efficiency: Drove faster time-to-market for future releases by designing reusable insight card patterns which could be leveraged by future financial wellness modules.

Zelle Reflection

Reflection

Valuable Insight

What I feel: I feel deeply energized and grounded by the journey of building something truly impactful, realizing how design, empathy, and technology intersect to solve real human problems.

What I learn: I have learned that true innovation isn’t just about adding smart features, but ensuring those features are fiercely inclusive, secure, and genuinely intuitive for every single user.

What I do: Moving forward, I will champion these accessible, data-driven patterns from the ground up, turning insights into friction-free experiences.

Last words: Build with intention, design for everyone, and never let complexity overshadow human connection.

Valuable Insight
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Thank You

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