IDEO Reimagines the Future of Personal Banking

Design and innovation powerhouse IDEO is known for using design thinking and keen behavioral insight to reinvent object, products and systems that touch our daily lives. Most recently, they envisioned three scenarios for the future of the book, but one of their more interesting new projects looks at something far less exciting but arguably more central to our day-to-day operation: personal banking.

For Spanish bank BBVA, IDEO examined the interaction experience of ATM’s, which has lagged dramatically behind the actual technology powering these machines. From simple yet impactful tweaks like 90-degree booth rotation for better privacy to cutting-edge customization software, the prototype — which took two years of development — offers a seamless, highly visual bridge between physical and virtual.

The goal was not how to further automate the teller but, rather, how to humanize the machine.”

Unsurprisingly, the project was the result of wide cross-disciplinary collaboration between designers, engineers, technologists and financial advisors – a testament to the future of design as a petri dish of creative cross-pollination.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, Design Observer and Huffington Post, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.