The worlds biggest retailer moves into the debit space

2019 - 2020

In 2019 Green Dot built a new platform for all their banking services under my watchful eye with the intent of launching their own new product. With major changes to the executive team at the end of 2019, that project was put on hold and the company was interested in leveraging the work that was completed to some profitable end. At the same time the Amazon Flex Debit Card project was signed and underway. I proposed reshaping the platform for Amazon Flex.

One of my first steps in this process was to become a Flex driver myself. After driving a few shifts and understanding the driver’s experience using the Flex app, I had first-hand knowledge of the norms and expectations established by Amazon and could better map that experience onto the banking app we were building. We tested our early Invision prototypes on actual devices at one of the Flex drivers’ centers in West Los Angeles to get actual drivers opinions on what we were planning to build.

We tried out multiple versions (bottom right) of the UI design accenting each of Amazon’s main brand colors from a stoic grey they call “Squid Ink” to their bright orange to Amazon blue. Ultimately they choose the safe bet with dark grey headers and a white page, but we did get the strong blue modals in there and we’re working on a dark mode for v3.

Within 3 months we re-skinned the GoBank Rewards app, updated the IA, changed the product configuration and provided guidance to dev to begin building the new Amazon Flex app. It launched successfully in late 2020. The designer I managed on the GoBank Rewards project all throughout 2019 is now the UX lead on Amazon Flex. Pretty proud of that. He was pretty green when he started with Green Dot.

This was also the pilot project for our team’s transition from Sketch to Figma. I was the first one at our company to give this new app a trial on a live project and soon became the acknowledged authority on its capabilities. I helped the team transition from Sketch to Figma with a series of training sessions for both local and remote team members.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat

2019 was a tough year for Green Dot. Shifting executive team, shifting priorities, way too much to do in too little time. The lead PO and I kept our heads down, kept designing features and kept pushing the dev teams. By years end we had a hell of an MVP (well, more than “minimum”) that in short order went to good use.

Design, iterate, test, design, iterate . . .

The base has been through a couple of rounds of front-end redesigns in the last year and a half, appreciable user testing on the Design Thinking model, and now I’m busy preparing it for various permutations of a White Label configuration to enable us to launch new partners with minimal effort.

Where it is now

Here’s the current build in the Apple App Store.

The final design that got built

An alternative dark mode that didn’t get built.