Kiwibank asked Lushai to help them better understand the online needs of their small business customers. We interviewed and observed a range of customers, learning about their contexts and needs while validating emerging ideas Kiwibank had about how to serve them better. We ran workshops with Kiwibank to clarify research goals and identify what kinds of customers we would need to talk to.

We recruited users and organised interviews across Auckland. We visited bike shops, factories, gun stores, offices and homes and used a combination of structured interviews and observational research until we had enough data to identify major themes and to bring their customers’ stories to life.

We created prototypes of emerging concepts and gathered formative data on the relevance of these concepts to their users. We took advantage of our face time with their customers to perform time-on-task testing that was used to validate potential solutions to the information architecture challenges Kiwibank were facing with their online banking service for SMEs.

Ultimately, we created a presentation which told their customers’ stories and delivered a report linking those stories to the data and experiences that informed them. This report went on to inform decision making and support new business cases by giving Kiwibank a base of evidence to work from.