UX/UI dream job: In-house @ a bank?

Why the least obvious choice might be one of the best.

Working on client side, let alone a financial institution, isn‘t the most obvious career choice for creatives. I'm often asked: How could an old-fashioned number-crunching colossus ever compete with hip creative places like agencies or start ups?

It’s an understandable sentiment, yet an uninformed one that misses the entire forest for just a couple of trees. In this day and age, a client-side role is kick-ass for skill, personal development and the creative career. It might the best job a UX/UI talent could ever have.

Allow me to cut the branches for you.

Confession time

But first this – I’m far from being a natural fit myself. During all my years at ad agencies, digital shops and my own business I used to have a catch phrase:

" Put your full passion and love into it. After all, you don’t work at a bank! "

Whoops.

No, I didn't expect to become a design lead at a bank. I was focussed on film shoots, viral campaigns, big ideas and award shows and I cringed at the mere idea of working client-side. And that wasn't just me.

The creative animal

Most creatives share the same prejudices: Corporations are a presumed creative dead end, an uncool, snail-paced environment full of elbows and senseless ignorant decisions. A grave yard for passion where you can't get anything done.

You may be appalled by this, if you’re not a designer, copy writer or UX professional, so let me help you understand creative people with a manifesto:

" Our work is our life, there is no difference between one and the other. Everything we do reflects our heart, soul and personality, that's why we're deeply emotionally tied to it. Our currency is that of ideas, love, sweat and tears, of excitement, simplicity and perfection. We are motivated by our desire to change the world, not by a pay check or a title. We share one goal: to create true value for customers with designs that benefit them. We are, in short, idealists at the core. "

Creatives therefore seek an environment that solidifies their creative confidence by allowing them to be expressive and explorative.

With this in mind, let's break down the pros & cons of the work-places as I have experienced them in the last two decades.

A work-place comparison

AGENCY – A fast-paced Rock'n'Roll life

Pros: A large variety of challenges from entirely different brands, keeping creatives on their feet. Projects are briefed by a single decision maker with an explicit end date, which makes for a simple stakeholder structure and timeline. Celebration moments are clearly defined and colleagues share the same values.

Cons: Exhaustingly long hours with low pay and low influence. Projects oftentimes have a short shelf-life and work becomes repetitive over time. The role of execution partner puts agencies at the end of a client’s project with no ability to influence their inception and no chance to sustainably impact the holistic brand experience.

Focus: Communication ideas and execution quality

Good for: Young guns who don’t mind the hours. They can quickly acquire skills across entirely different brands and build a diverse portfolio

START UP – Working towards one goal

Pros: A place of high collaboration and high focus with united belief for a singular product. The promise of building something that people will enjoy using is emotionally fulfilling. The collective goal conveys a feeling of being pioneers for the better with an elevated sense of ownership.

Cons: Exhaustingly long hours, often a high sense of insecurity with regards to funding and general success of the idea. Setbacks can endanger the existence of the entire company over night, leadership is often unexperienced and then there’s the pink elephant that the overwhelming majority of startups fail.

Focus: Building a product or service

Good for: Creatives of all levels who can accept the risk and seek to make a longer lasting mark by impacting customers with a product they believe in.

IN-HOUSE DESIGN TEAM – Taking the driver's seat

Pros: A spot next to major decision makers with an ability to define the experience for millions of customers and develop a brand over time. It’s a place that offers unlimited opportunity to influence an entire company on all levels. All this in the midst of an established and sustainably functional business.

Cons: The need to deal with hierarchy-infused politics and complicated processes. It’s a test for one’s tenacity to keep fighting for putting UX before features. Creatives need to learn business language and work sustainably on a single brand.

Focus: Building a brand over time

Good for: Creatives who seek to make a long-term impact, are willing to iteratively improve upon their work and who can challenge themselves to actively drive change at scale.

Citi Mobile puts UX simplicity into customers' hands

The opportunity is now

While every one of these comes with unique upsides, here's an important consideration: which one offers the best mid- to long-term perspective?

Take a minute and google today’s buzzwords: customer-centric design, user experience, design thinking, transformation, fintech.

Companies have begun to understand the importance of owning the customer experience themselves. Many, especially in the finance and insurance industries, have neglected UX for decades. They are willing to change, but they need help to achieve results fast.

We’re therefore seeing a large global shift since a few years. Creatives are going in-house in order to build design depts, CX centers, labs and the like. The last time our industry has seen change at this scale was in the late 1990s when there was just one buzzword: the internet.

Now, it’s easy to give in to scepticism, if one can’t see past the corporate entrance. But that’s missing an incredible opportunity for the wrong reasons. Going client-side means BEING the client and therefore acquiring influence - not only over the work, but also over how the work is being conducted and even over the inception of projects. Talk about chances on multiple levels.

What do you need to succeed?

The same you already possess: Passion & love, your desire to change the world and a genuine interest in collaboration.

Just be yourself; be the one who is vocal and radically candid, the one who creates, prototypes and works like mad. One of your greatest assets is your access to emotions - Use that to create believers. Then you will see that you CAN change the world, one project at a time.

You’ll become the person who improves the brand experience for customers and at the same time makes everyone else in the company more successful in what they do.

While you teach design fundamentals you’ll learn more about business than you ever expected, because you realise you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Yes, at some point you’ll face someone who thinks a designer's only interest is visual expression and who makes you feel like you’re sharing a donkey with Don Quixote. But gallop past those windmills - you're sure to gain credibility every time you raise bottom lines.

This business partner's hesitation to trust is the result of language – creatives use words from a distant universe for someone with business KPIs. They are not trained to gauge the sales impact of UX/UI, of cognitive load and love. Conversely, you'll struggle with understanding quarterly forecast spreadsheets. Spoiler alert - the more you do, the more you're being heard.

It may not be the proverbial walk in the park, but no one can stop you from planting trees wherever you go. And since your work has never had so much impact, it's going to be worth it a thousand times. At the end of the day, all progress in life happens outside the comfort zone.

Need proof?

I'm very happy to share some proof with you that in-house works: We've just launched an entirely re-imagined mobile credit card experience, making the interaction more delightful, loveable, simple to use and easy to understand.

This project was never briefed. Instead, it's the direct result of an idea in the design department, followed by a level of passion, dedication and collaboration in the entire company that rallies any agency or start up.

A passion project.

The MVP was brought to life by a small agile Scrum team in just a few months – It comes with human language, pixel perfection and 3x the performance of the old app. Given the prejudices, this should've been impossible to achieve in the world’s largest consumer bank. But here it is and we’re just getting started.

What made it happen was genuine conviction and the ability to ignite fire in internal partners from tech to biz, legal, compliance, etc. The key: Once they became believers, they pulled through and blew us away with their passion.

These partners have become the reason why I get up in the morning. It’s because of them that I feel the in-house model works and it’s because of them that this is a tremendously rewarding job. At a bank. Who would've thought?

I shall leave you with my new catch phrase: Come around for a coffee; we might surprise you.

And for companies a quick bonus – insights on how to handle these strange creative people. You'll make their performance go through the roof:

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