Bank of America
Connecting a conversation to a banking task.
Foundational conversational flows and prototypes for Erica during the assistant’s early development.
- My role
- Senior UX Designer · Erica AI Platform
- Period
- Feb 2017 – Jun 2017
- Designed for
- Banking customers
AI leadership notePrototype a banking assistant with explicit permissions
Original approach
Established conversational flows, interaction patterns and prototypes for core banking tasks across mobile and desktop experiences.
What could change today
Prototype an agent that can gather approved transaction details for a disputed charge, explain what it found and prepare a handoff to a banker. Keep money movement in the authenticated confirmation flow.
Workflow excerpt. The numbered steps show the same part of the journey in each version. The full project includes work beyond this comparison.
Original workflow
- Ask a question
- Understand the response
- Review the action
- Continue the banking task
Proposed workflow with AI
- Ask the assistant about a specific charge.
- Read its explanation alongside the account record.
- Check the proposed action and confirm permission.
- Continue in the authenticated flow or reach a banker.
How to test the change
Test ambiguous requests, disputed transactions and requests outside the customer’s permissions. Compare answers with the account record and check that the customer can reach a person.
01 / Customer & problem
The need behind the work.
Who needed this.
Banking customers need everyday requests to lead to understandable account information and a clear next action.
The problem to solve.
A banking assistant needs to translate everyday requests into useful account actions. The conversation and the surrounding interface have to work together so the customer can understand the state of the task.
Establish understandable assistant interactions that connect naturally to core banking journeys.
02 / My ownership
Responsibilities.
My work covered the early UX interaction foundation. Erica’s later platform development and business performance belong to the wider Bank of America organization.
Bank of America: financial and regulatory compliance training
The constraint to work through.
Conversation, navigation and task state must agree. A useful response has to connect to the wider banking journey.
- Ask a question
- Understand the response
- Review the action
- Continue the banking task
03 / Actions & delivery
How the work came together.
Worked with legal and compliance teams during Erica’s early design. Completed the bank’s financial and regulatory compliance training, including fair lending, privacy and ADA web accessibility.
Established conversational flows, interaction patterns and prototypes for core banking tasks across mobile and desktop experiences.
Worked with cross-functional partners to connect assistant interactions, navigation and the wider banking experience through conversational progression and related task states.
04 / Decisions & judgment
What carries through the design.
Treat the conversation as part of the interface.
A request, response and next action need a coherent visual and interaction hierarchy.
Keep the customer oriented.
Related screen states provide continuity as a customer moves from a question toward an action.
Prototype the connected journey.
A sequence of interactions communicates more than an isolated assistant screen.
The experience in detail
From a banking question to a specific transaction.
Conversation narrows the request, then structured results and transaction detail give the customer something inspectable.
01 / Ask
Start with a transaction-search request.
02 / Review results
See the matching transactions in context.
03 / Inspect a transaction
Open the merchant, amount and supporting details.
The experience in detail
Make the conversation implementable.
Natural-language requests need explicit intent, account eligibility, date limits and recovery paths. The interaction model connects utterances to supported responses and screen behavior.
01 / Validate the request
The search flow handles supported accounts, time limits and an unintelligible request.
02 / Map utterances to intent
A response matrix connects requests, valid and invalid conditions, and the resulting UI.
03 / Specify the result
The transaction specification defines pagination, detail behavior and return position.
The experience in detail
Show what the assistant is doing.
Listening, thinking, speaking, mute and recovery are different states. The mapped controls and visual language give implementation a shared reference.
Voice and text behavior
Numbered controls map to actions, transitions and responses.
The visual language of voice
Wave and microphone specifications support recognizable assistant states.
05 / Results & business value
What changed through the work.
Foundational conversational flows, interaction patterns and prototypes for core banking tasks during Erica’s early development.
Why it matters.
The early work delivered foundational conversational flows, interaction patterns and prototypes that connected assistant requests to core banking tasks.
06 / Reflection
Lessons for future projects.
Keep prototyping the conversation and the surrounding interface together, especially where an utterance changes the state of a financial task.
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