Mr Same Guy yesterday, today and tomorrow

1. Mr Same Guy yesterday.

In the old days – when we launched PC-banking for SMEs and private customers (1982) at Union Bank of Finland we lived with the false impression that we had private and corporate customers – when we defacto only had human customers – in different roles.

As a result the user experience was not similar enough across roles. This did not disturb customers too much as they were not overwhelmed with IT-initiatives.

2. Mr Same Guy today.

It is no news that Internet, Mobile Networks, Big Data (supported by exponentially cheaper processing), gamefication, YouTubes, pads, smartphones, omnipresent sensors etc etc is shovering potential users with information and propositions.

This means – Less Time for any ONE Thing. Which again means that user communities are split into an ever increasing number – consuming the only scarce resource – TIME – in such a way that rapid breakthroughs are very difficult to accomplish. Those who succeed can become Facebooks or Angry Birds..

So – we have tried to stress the need to (i) be clinically simple, (ii) clinically similar – across services AND roles and (iii) use platforms that are already familiar (Importance of Economy of Repetition growing exponentially). A good example of this has been to use bank ID also for public sector services.

3. Mr Same Guy in the future.

Nothing tells us that the change is slowing down. So in the future services will have to know much more about what the customer really needs – in his different roles – where he needs it – and how he can take it into use by just pressing “a” in his mobile device. Moving from self service to service.