Overview

This case study explores the development of a user-centric email system for Open, focused on providing seamless communication, efficient email management, and an intuitive user experience. The project aimed to address issues related to organization, ease of use, and the integration of essential features that empower users to manage emails effortlessly.

Problem Statement & Objectives

Problem Statement:

Users struggled with managing emails efficiently, an unintuitive layout, and insufficient prioritization of essential emails. The existing system lacked the fluidity and flexibility needed for optimal productivity.

Objectives:

• Design a clean and organized interface to simplify email management.
• Implement prioritization features to help users focus on critical communications.
• Ensure easy navigation and seamless integration with Open’s ecosystem.

Challenge

This was my very first project for Open, they are a fintech company and at that stage, it was an early startup. Their email communication was entirely text-based, auto-generated stuff; so it needed a complete design! When I first started, I tried to understand how this particular industry works, what are the competitors doing, the best practices, and the trends that are going on.

• To understand and create a brand language via the Email communication system.
• Design Email templates for all scenarios and build a system out of them.

Process

The workflow was first, to understand the requirement of the company; it lacked a brand language and it was in a very early stage of building its presence. Being in the fintech industry there were certain common practices one had to follow, the limitations of how much creatively you can play around as there had to be certain standard content always needed to be present. The email bounce rate should be low and it should always hit the primary inbox. So we had to play around with it.

We had to reduce the use of images as more graphical or heavy file-sized emails were considered spam or promotional. There was a font limitation as we had to make sure the email looked as designed on all kinds of devices and operating systems. Designed it for both light and dark modes where it auto-adapts to the preference of the user, viewing it either on mobile phones or desktops and so on. Now, at the moment the trend of 3D objects and bold typography was present so we decided to adapt to it by keeping the imaging simple and clean, with less clutter and up-to-the-point visuals. To show transparency, as you would expect from a banking platform. Kept the language of the emails very natural and first person, to appeal to the audience and not make it seem like an auto-generated reply! Tried some A/B test samples to understand the performance of certain emails and improve the design for better reachability and conversion.

Below, you will be able to see an overview of the email templates that were designed and used for multiple scenarios.