MERRILL LYNCH EDGE IOS & ANDROID APP

I lead a team to design and develop Merrill Edge’s first android and iOS mobile apps in 2012. Merrill Edge was created to merge Bank of America’s online investing with Merrill Lynch’s research tools for the self-directed retail banking customer.

UX Challenges

We started from a blank canvas. At the time, we designed both apps using the operating system’s native UI components and patterns respectively. The content was the same for both android and iOS, but the interactions and expected behavior were to adhere to their corresponding interface guidelines.

For our users, look and feel is very important – they want a clean, easy to use UI. However, just accessing their accounts was most important. Content and function were key for success. We struggled from a technology standpoint to aggregate internal and external accounts. At the end we had to make it very clear to the user what balances they were viewing.

UX Solutions

In order to maintain consistency across the entire app, and to make sure we covered all bases, we needed to wireframe out each section and each interaction with requirements. It was not as agile as I like, but it was necessary at the time. We needed to establish patterns, templates and behaviors that we could reuse for tablet. We were designing flexible UX solutions for long term and across platforms.

The visual language was important to nail down as well. From a marketing and brand standpoint, we needed to align with the online signature that was evolving at the time. We also wanted connect our visual style guide as closely as possible for both apps. We wanted to stay on brand no matter how the user accessed our content.

Because of the technology constraints at the time, we had to pay very close attention to labels, without cluttering the page. We labeled precisely which accounts the user had access to and which rolled up to give a total. We grouped the account types in logical categories our users are familiar with and provided access to view more where applicable.

Nothing went to production without thorough user testing. In our labs we tested mobile prototypes on devices with users. We validated the overall usability of the apps, the look and feel (visual design), content and functionality.