Did you know BT has a Design Lab? Our colleague, Andrei Baican, Head of Customer Experience @Banca Transilvania, had the chance to share more at the Design Thinking Forum, an event held in Bucharest.

In this article, we’ve pulled together the main ideas Andrei shared about the connection between the Design Lab and digital banking and, why not, a fresh reminder that BT is a #coolbank:

• The Design Lab supports the bank’s business lines and, in turn, helps build a better experience for BT’s more than 3 million customers, especially in digital banking.
• According to the InVision study, companies fall into one of five levels of design maturity. Level 5, the most mature, is represented by visionaries who embed design in their core business strategy.
• BT has reached level 4, where we also test and analyze digital products. BT’s journey started at level 1, when the focus was only on “production”; we moved to level 2, when we began running workshops with the bank’s business lines. Then we advanced to level 3, which brought structure and prioritization.
• In practice, applying design thinking to digital banking is a step forward for personalized offerings, greater efficiency, and a better understanding of customers.
• Lessons learned on this journey:

-         Define the vision: You need a clear vision to successfully embed the design thinking method when generating new concepts for the bank’s business lines.

-         It’s ok to make mistakes: We try, we experiment, and we accept a margin for error.

-         Job rotation: We build cross-functional teams for different projects, based on complementarity, performance and experience across different areas.

-         Fast delivery: We deliver quick wins.

-         Celebrate success: We celebrate both the small and the big wins after every project, which keeps up the enthusiasm for the new design thinking methodologies that are proving effective.

The Design Lab story at BT began in 2016, at the Liberty Technology Park in Cluj-Napoca, since when the digital banking hub has been transforming the bank’s offering into digital solutions. In practice, it launches and manages projects by connecting creative ideas. The team numbers almost 100 people, with an average age of 35. It’s a mix of disciplines: from banking to IT.

Why Design Thinking? Because it’s a problem-solving approach that most often leads to innovation.