How Research Hub Empowers Design-Led Research Across a Global Digital Banking Solution

nCino is an all-in-one cloud banking software solution that serves more than 1,850 financial institutions worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the customer experience through speed and convenience, understanding the needs of their users is crucial. Research Hub allows nCino to remove friction in their research and make research a foundational part of their design process.

The Problem

As a B2B organization, nCino’s online banking software is used by financial institutions worldwide, but to optimize their product design and cater to the specific needs of consumers, they needed to understand the experience of end users.  

nCino sought to solve a number of challenges in user research:

• Product and design teams didn’t have direct access to end users
• Teams needed to conduct research with specific personas – sometimes with professionals like brokers or loan officers, and sometimes with banking customer end users.
• Research required many different tools to communicate with users, schedule interviews, and pay incentives, and each tool came with its own limitations that hindered the research process.

^{Research at nCino}

The Solution

nCino researched a number of tools in their search for a solution that would streamline user research and eliminate time constraints and complications for product and design teams.

To solve challenges in accessing users, scheduling across time zones, and bottlenecks in research workflows, nCino turned to Research Hub.

“User Interviews took all that away. It’s the best out there in terms of B2B end user management, without question. What we needed, we found in User Interviews. There is no solution for user research for B2B organizations better than User Interviews”
-Nathan Jones, Senior Product Designer, nCino

nCino sought to enable the Design organization to lead and perform their own research, empowered and facilitated by a Research Ops lead. Finding a solution that didn’t limit team access was key.

“Most of the other research tools out there are catered to dedicated user researchers, charging per seat. User Interviews has no seat cap. You can allow different levels of access to different people. That was a big deal for us.”
-Nathan Jones, Senior Product Designer, nCino

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The Results

With User Interviews’ Research Hub, nCino was able to implement a process that democratized research across product and design teams, streamlining scheduling, conducting interviews, and incentivizing participants.

“User Interviews has completely removed any of the friction aspect of research.”
-Nathan Jones, Senior Product Designer, nCino

Research Hub enabled nCino to:

• Streamline and speed up every process in research, from recruiting to scheduling, conducting interviews, and incentivizing participants
• Find the right participants to speak to and easily return to those same users in the iterative process using features like Hub segmentation.
• Reduce the number of tools and the complexity from the process
• Seamlessly use User Interviews alongside other best-in-class tools like Dovetail to share findings broadly
• Bring products to market with confidence in user-validated feedback

^{The nCino Design team}

Research in Practice

In their most recent study, nCino sought user insight on a solution that would allow loan officers to verify customer information in a more efficient and cost-effective way.

1. Foundational Research
   They began by using User Interviews to speak directly with loan officers to gain an understanding of their current process and to discover what challenges they faced and how the process could be improved.
   
   
2. Internal Testing
   With real user insights, nCino performed internal tests, created prototypes, and began an iterative process to design the best possible solution.
   
   
3. Iteration
   Hub enabled nCino to conduct research to inform and validate the user experience each step of the way, allowing for multiple rounds of interviews as they performed product iterations.
   
   
4. Share Findings
   Using User Interviews with Dovetail, nCino was able to seamlessly conduct research and store findings, making  user insights easily accessible to stakeholders and team members. The result was designing an optimal solution that they can bring to market with confidence.
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“That’s the thing! We’re confident in it. We have verified data from users that they’d find value in it.”
-Nathan Jones, Senior Product Designer, nCino